July 9, 2022

My father had one sister and she was two years younger than him. She would have been 90 today.

They grew up in the Depression, the children of Polish immigrants. My grandmother worked as a maid for a rich white woman in West Hartford and took the bus to work. My grandfather worked in the industrial kitchen of the Bond bread plant. By the time I showed up both were retired, constantly bickering with each other. It was more than bickering though. My grandmother was always screaming at my grandfather, who never said much. They had separate bedrooms and shared a jack-and-jill bathroom. That was also the only bathroom in their rented apartment on the second floor of a 3-family Victorian house.

My dad joined the Navy at 17, lying about his age and itching to leave home as soon as possible. There had to be another world out there. 

My aunt Theresa stayed on, never living on her own until my grandparents were both gone. She never married. 

As a young woman, she spent the money she earned from her clerical job on nice clothes, Frank Sinatra concerts, trips to racetracks, casinos, and jai alai frontons with her other single friend, Delores – or Deli as she was called. I don’t think she was gay – she just had unrealistic standards and a warped sense of values. The kind of guy she wanted – rich, good-looking, upper class – would never take a working-class Polish girl seriously. And certainly, not one who hung out at bars and gambling venues making bawdy jokes. She got teased for being an old maid. The longer she waited for Mr. Right, the more her marriage options diminished. 

By the early 1970s, there was one bachelor who was sweet on her. Chester. He inherited the local funeral home from his family and wore brown plaid polyester suits. He was not a looker. My aunt looked down on him. I’m sure imagining a life with him was as repulsive as it was depressing. 

Theresa was like a perpetual teenager. My mother said when she first met her she was shocked to see how lazy and selfish she was, and how disrespectful she was when she spoke to my grandparents. She wasn’t too happy about having a Japanese sister-in-law either so she wasn’t very nice to my mother. Until I was born.

My aunt adored me, her only niece. And because she was like a post-adolescent always looking for a good time, I loved spending time with her. She introduced me to all the forbidden things – swear words, dirty and racist jokes, gossip, makeup, and would even let me sip her drinks! 

She was still single and in her fifties by the time my grandmother died. Partying and going out didn’t seem interesting anymore so she found fervent purpose in the anti-abortion movement. She was always politically conservative – stupid, my father said – but this issue drove a wedge between us as did a deep retreat into her faith, further reinforced by a Polish pope. I was already a young adult, living a sinful life in New York. Our only common ground now was a love of food.

One time when she visited me in the early 1980s we had lunch at Il Corallo on Prince Street. My secret was that I was pregnant – but planning to not be by the following week. That restaurant is still there and every time I’d walk by since I ended up living on Prince Street for 27 years, I’d remember that day. The day my fetus and I had lunch with my aunt.

Theresa was 63 when she died in 1995, the age I will be in a few weeks.