Musings about Aunt Laura etc.

I'm feeling reeeaaalllly sentimental today! (yeah, like this is something new for me... )

As many of you who frequent my eBay store know, Mom sent to me a few weeks ago a shoebox full of old post cards. She was going to throw them out, and I told her to send them to me because there are many post card sellers on eBay and they actually make a living selling them. (Actually, Mom is finally getting into the habit of calling me every time she's going to throw something out now -- whew! If not to sell it, for me to KEEP it! LOL ...as though I have any room and know what to do with them....!) Anyway, she was trivializing the worth of this heavy little box, and I'm visualizing 1) $$ and 2) memories.

Today, the memories are just flooring me. Especially about Aunt Laura (my great aunt, who was my grandfather Alfred's half sister). To describe her as an artist is an understatement. For those who don't know, she taught art at the Art Institute of Chicago for 62 years! Yes, SIXTY-TWO (I just recently verified that with Mom, BTW). During her summers she travelled and painted EVERYwhere. And, she never married because she never wanted to give up her art. Quite incredible for her day! (To get a sense of her time period, she was born in 1883).

What I'm having a hard time with today is the questions I have for her. I've gone through this before with many of our relatives who have passed on. The older I get, the more questions I seem to have for them, and I'll ask myself, "why didn't I ask them while they were alive?" Well, the answer is simple: I didn't even have the knowledge to even ASK the question! Sad.

Going through this box of post cards just raises even more questions for me. I can tell which ones spent time with Aunt Laura because they're covered in the Chicago soot, or they were mixed in with the ones that had her handwriting on them.

Today I've been working on the post cards from Hawaii.

Hawaii? you ask. Yup, Hawaii. Aunt Laura had a good friend named Eleanor Neff who was an heir to the Castle & Cook Company of Hawaii. Now, I never remembered anything about Aunt Laura even GOING to Hawaii. But obviously she did by the collection of post cards. I thought Eleanor lived here on the mainland somewhere, but can't remember (I'll have to find Eleanor's book she wrote... that should tell more).

These cards from Hawaii are SOOOOO Aunt Laura!! There are a bunch of fish ones that I just KNOW she picked up because of the color and design of the fish (unlike me who would buy them because I wanted to identify the fish!). She did stuff like that. She would also just buy a small swath of cloth for the same reason, too. And for the feel of things. These post cards not only have the design and color that Aunt Laura would go for ("oooooo, honey!" -- can't you just hear her?), but many of these cards have a FEEL to them that I know she just caressed. They're almost like silk!

So my questions today are: when did she go? with whom? why? what did she do over there? how long did she stay? how many times did she go? where did she stay?

And stupid questions like, did she know how to swim? I don't ever remember her swimming... I'll have to ask Mom that one...