This week Maryvel Firda is a special “guest contributor” for the May Memorial blog/newsletter. Maryvel is a deacon at May Memorial Baptist Church and teaches English at Powhatan High School.
One Thanksgiving, maybe 1979, we had Daddy’s aunts out here from Richmond. Nannie, the oldest, didn’t come– she was a shut-in, and I remember imagining that meant she couldn’t leave her apartment under any circumstances, for mysterious reasons I couldn’t understand. She wasn’t that much older than Sister, who was her roommate. Sister’s real name was Margaret, but she was also a twin with the only brother, Thomas. Even all those years after “Brother” had died, Sister always remained Sister. She was funny, and she laughed at my jokes, and she would play games with me. (Mom wouldn’t let me ask any of them to play “Old Maid,” one of my favorites, because it might hurt their feelings.) They liked games where you didn’t have to move around, like “Who’s Got the Button,” and in case you’ve never played that whirlwind of excitement, here’s what you do. Gather as many beloved old ladies into a circle in comfortable seats as you can, and have them cup their hands as if to receive something. Then you take a button that you’ve obtained from one of them (they all have good-sized bags of buttons in their sewing boxes; they save every button from all their worn-out and discarded dresses in the certain knowledge that they will be needed someday). And then you, preferably a little girl around 6-7 years old, will go around the room with the button in your own cupped hands, pretending to give it to each, but really, of course, secretly bestowing it upon only one. And then everyone has to guess who got it. And forty or fifty years later you will tear up remembering how warm and soft and delicate those waiting hands were.
Two other aunts, Evie and Lou, lived right across the street. Evie was tiny– at seven I was already taller than she was! She was widowed, with no children, despite her and my Uncle Bill having wanted them so badly. That was one of my earliest lessons in heartbreak: people don’t always get what they want, even if they really deserve it. Of all the aunts, she was the one who adored me the most, so of course she was my favorite. (She always got the button.) She would keep “ging’ale” on hand for me in the icebox, and her kitchen table was set all the time, with the plates and glasses turned upside down. I got to spend the night with her sometimes, and I loved to sit on the little window seat in her bedroom and look out over the city lit up for the night, so different from Powhatan. It was terribly romantic and surely the beginning of my yearning for city life. Lou could play the piano. All the aunts could play the piano– Nannie taught me to play “Chopsticks” on the piano in her and Sister’s apartment– but Lou could play the piano. She could light that thing up. I hadn’t heard playing like that in real life again until Sandra came to us.
The Thanksgiving that the aunts came out to dinner was extra special, because we so rarely had guests. Daddy and I went to pick them up in the morning, and I was pretty convinced that he could get Nannie out of that apartment if he really wanted to– surely he could just carry her out– but whatever spell that kept her inside held fast. (We made sure that she had a nice dinner and sent plenty of leftovers home with Sister.) Mom had spent the day before polishing her wedding silver and smoothing her mother’s hand-tatted lace tablecloth over and over (and over and over until I honestly thought she had lost her mind. I had no idea at the time about the amount of pressure that is brought to bear by having three of your husband’s aunts to Thanksgiving dinner.) I was amazed to learn that these aunts used to live in Powhatan, right next to the courthouse, where the Rescue Squad was. (It’s the Village Park now.) It was hard to imagine them, sixty years earlier, growing up just a block from where I was growing up, going to church where I went to church, where their daddy was the preacher.
And now sixty years earlier has become over a hundred years earlier, and I’m thankful for these happy memories, for the lives of these wonderful women of my family, who, as saints of May Memorial, are your family too. I am thankful for all of you. Happy Thanksgiving.