A Visit With Aunt Betty

            What is it called when the opportunity comes to look into the eyes of a close relative and the decades fade into oblivion? The hands of the person are also the hands of her mother and her brother (my dad). What is that phenomenal occurrence? Is it a form of time travel? Is it transference? Or, is it a soul-satisfying emotional connection, comfort, and a rare privilege?

            My aunt is 94 years old, born in August 1921. She’s the only remaining family member of my parents’ generation. She is three years older than my dad who died in 2001. We Dansbys have the same brow, nose, chin, shape in the face. I wonder, should I live to be her age, if I will look like my Aunt Betty?

            When she realized that seated before her, indeed, was her niece, her brother’s daughter Margaret Jane, all the way from Arkansas, we embraced. I felt the arms of my family wrap me in love and heard them say, “I’ve missed you so much.” I cried; the tears were spontaneous. I was not sad, except I miss my dad so much and I felt his presence in his sister's arms, the arms that enfolded me.

            Sometime during our conversation, which was more like a monologue with response on her part, she commented, “I’ve been looking forward to your visit for such a long time.”

           

               She has been my female hero, always. When, as a child, I learned she was a nurse, I wanted to be a nurse. She convinced me I did not. “You don’t want to clean up slop jars, darling girl. And you have to give people shots…” she continued. She’d convinced me with ‘slop jars.’ The point, though: she was independent, savvy, smart, beautiful, and a powerful woman who was, I believed, making her own way in the world. I wanted to be like my Aunt Betty.

            While she hated the strict nuns at St. Vincent’s School of Nursing in Little Rock, that school was her ticket and she punched it with relish. She was happiest, her daughter and I have discussed, when she was an Army Nurse, stationed in various areas in the South Pacific during WWII. After her tour of duty, she went to the University of Illinois and then transferred to Northwestern where she met and married Uncle Bill Stanton and became a wonderful mother to Kathleen and Bill, Jr.

            When I looked into her eyes, the years vanished. Her voice was the same as I remembered. The feel of her hands in mine and the lingering hug we shared answered a longing that I attribute to a deep desire to be in my parents’ embrace once again. It was a deeply satisfying emotional connection for which I will be eternally grateful.

            I’d intended our visit to be mutually satisfying, but I think I received the most profound blessing from our connection.