So @Dahiana, just what exactly did you and Mom talk about? You still haven't wrote that post you promised and why does she just smile knowingly when I wear my skirt? š
@TrinaStarr I was busy with a great guy š¹ last night but now I've finished it.
As I said before, Aunt Sally š¹ rocks and she is my favorite Aunt of all times even though she raised @TrinaStarr. It was Memorial Day and I had gone by to put some flowers on Mom @Lora_Cās š¹ and Dadās š¹ graves and Aunt Sally was there putting flowers on some other graves including Walt and Ellieās. We have those benches around the family plot and Aunt Sally looked like she had been crying and so we sat down.
She asked me if Mom and I had patched things up and made peace with each other which wasnāt surprising because Mom and I butted heads or had ādust upsā a lot and pushed each others buttons. I told her that we were good for a while there before the end and I actually got to know her a lot better than ever and Iām lucky to have gotten to know the real woman that was Mom. Aunt Sally admitted that this year was the first time that it really hit her that Mom was gone and that they had always been close because they were the youngest.
She wanted to talk and it was a fairly nice day and I had on my skirt because I was going to see if @TedStarr š¼šš¼ wanted some company. But Aunt Sally was a little misty eyed and I could tell that she was missing Mom just as much as I was. I like talking to her because she reminds me a lot of Mom and when I was younger I always went to her when Mom and I were fighting because I considered Aunt Sally the SANE version of Mom and someone who would listen to me instead of grounding me for whatever it was that I did. Mom was right when she grounded me but still, geeze, everything?
Aunt Sally said that Trina always went to Mom to ābitchā about her and Trina probably thought Mom was the SANE version of her. While we were on the subject of Trina, I asked her why she was the only one of us to have dark hair? She chuckled and said that not everyone was perfect but she loved Trina anyway. All my other cousins have blonde hair, sheās the freak.
Then it started. Aunt Sally said that Trina seemed to be a lot happier since she moved back to our home and that she and I seemed to pick it up right where we left off. Uh? Aunt Sally wasnāt so misty anymore, she was like a cat toying with a mouse, but the mouse wasnāt sure it was being toyed with. But I didnāt think a lot about it and figured that she knew we were close when we were growing up and that was all it was about. Then, Aunt Sally made a remark that she noticed that Trina and I were wearing skirts more and more lately. Whatās up with that?
What is this chick up to? She knew she was on to something because I canāt hide shit from her, never could, and all of a sudden Iām 15 years old again and my role model and mentor was asking me some questions that had a purpose. Aunt Sally doesnāt ramble or babble, she was every bit the āno shit no sugarā woman that Mom was. She was fishing. I thought.
I was thinking of what to say when she chimed in with how Uncle Bill would come into the house when I was over with Trina and say something like, āthose girls are at it again.ā Ha! Thatās generic and could mean anything, but Aunt Sally said she would always tell Uncle Bill not to worry because we were just girls and besides we couldnāt get each other pregnant. My mouth was dry and I couldnāt have spit if I wanted to.
She asked me how much I knew about Mom and Dadās marriage and right then she was talking to me woman to woman and made me feel that she really cared about what I knew and how I felt. I told her that I knew that there had been some rough spots a few years before, but that the last four or five years they really found each other again and that they had been happier than I had ever seen them, even before Dadās cancer. I didnāt know how much more to say or what to say.
Then Aunt Sally nodded her head towards where Walt and Ellie were buried side by side and I knew that they and Uncle Bill had been really tight friends back when. Aunt Sally was looking towards them when she said that after Walt lost Ellie to breast cancer, she would do Walt a favor every once in awhile because he was so lonely without Ellie and they had all been really close. She said Uncle Bill knew and was good with it and she said that it meant a lot to her and Walt and also Uncle Bill. I was listening and she knew I was wondering where this was going but still I wanted to hear what she had to say.
Aunt Sally told me about Momās rotten luck with her first two husbands and what happened when she had been raped by her second husbandās friend. She told about the divorce and trying to make it with two kids, my half brother and half sister, and then when she met Dad and how he accepted her without question. She also told about when I was āhatched outā and how much she thought of me and how much I reminded her of Mom. She told me how her and Mom were pretty much āaccidentsā and that Grandma wasnāt always the greatest because she was older when she had Mom and Aunt Sally.
Then Aunt Sally told me that Mom had told her a few years ago that she started an affair with someone she had been friends with for almost 30 years and who she had worked for right around the time I was born. That Mom didnāt really start anything until Dad hooked up with Ruthie on the side and how it hurt Mom. She said that Mom told her that she went after this guy she had been friends with, not intending to do anything, but she had always liked him and he always respected her.
Aunt Sally was laying it out there and I told her that I had found out about Dadās affair and Momās affair and without my saying anything, Aunt Sally said that the guy Mom was having an affair with was a decent guy and treated Mom well. I asked her if she had noticed Mom working through hers and Dadās affairs and that they seemed to get stronger because of it? She looked kind of surprised that I was thinking about the same thing that she was and said that Mom got back some of her confidence and self esteem maybe because of it. We talked about that for a little bit and Aunt Sally made me feel like her and Mom had never stopped talking and kept close. She even mentioned that Mom and Dad went on a ānudie vacationā a few years back and that Mom was bitching about sunburning her nipples and the sand in all of the wrong places.
Then she told me that she had been worried about Trina working too hard and that maybe she needed to slow down a little and come back and buy Walt and Ellieās old place and get back to her roots. Trina hadnāt been sure Ted would go for it but that he was all in because of the area and that it would be a better place to raise their kids than New York or Chicago or even out in Denver or Los Angeles. Aunt Sally said that Ted was a great guy for Trina and was glad that she married him but that she seemed happier to be back home and that we reconnected.
I let that sink in and Aunt Sally would have been willing to let it go but Iāve always loved her and so I asked her how the hell Uncle Bill knew that something was going on between Trina and me? She smiled at that and said that it wasnāt just Uncle Bill, but her, my Mom and my Dad all knew that Trina and I were doing a little more than girlhood exploring. She wasnāt putting me down or making fun of me.
I have a lot of respect for Aunt Sally and I love and admire her, and she had shared with me that she had done Walt some favors after he lost Ellie. I told her that Trina and I had taken it further and that we really are close to each other, more than ever. I told her that we sometimes get together for some really intimate times and our husbands give us the space to reconnect. That was something that Aunt Sally asked me about as to how our husbands felt about it and if they were good with it? Doesnāt it bother them? How do Trina and I make peace with them knowing and did we really consider their feelings?
So I told Aunt Sally that I had learned a lot from Mom and that she and I talked about her mistakes in her marriage, well marriages, and Trina and I didnāt want to keep things from our husbands. Aunt Sally was nodding her head in agreement and not saying anything but I loved the look on her face that made me think maybe I had earned her respect. Iām still the ālittle girlā talking to her favorite Aunt but she wasnāt even looking or sounding all judgy like some of the older people would. Still she wanted to know how our husbands were dealing with it and I told her that Trina and I had talked long and hard about how to or IF to include them.
Aunt Sally was miles ahead and said something like, āso thatās why the skirtsā and smiled and leaned her head back, like she did when I was a kid when she really thought or processed what I had said to her and didnāt dismiss me as some little kid. Finally she asked me if we were being careful and I pulled out a condom and told her that we were, but she almost half laughed and said she didnāt mean that, āwere we being carefulā? She added that if we werenāt all on the same page that things could āgo southā in a major way and really tear apart a family.
Then Aunt Sally and I talked about all the brain damage Trina and I went through to set up rules and protocols and even etiquette between us so that it would deteriorate into a bunch of āgrab assā or crossing boundaries. In part, I told her, that was how the skirt idea evolved as a sort of signal that she and I were open to suggestions but that, really, our husbands werenāt all handsy and grabby and really respected us, so, it was working out, but that we were still new to it all.
Then Aunt Sally laid in a million dollar question about what would happen if one of us wanted to go back to the way it was before or one of us didnāt want to go back to the way before? I told her that as of right now, we all agreed that if one wanted out, that that the other could stay in but in light of what has happened, we werenāt sure. We were just going to make sure we all talked about it and made sure it was OK before we had to face an either/or situation.
But Aunt Sally and I pretty much agreed that we couldnāt say for sure.
Aunt Sally doesnāt know about the enemas and didnāt ask for the details, or whether or not we did threesomes or foursomes. All she said was that if us ākidsā wanted some alone time to let her know and she would watch the kids, feed them sugar, spoil them rotten, let them run wild, and then give them back to us when we were done.
She wasnāt smiling when she said that.