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A Woman's Journal

The Aunts

By Maggie Turner

January 5, 2000

The Aunts

The loss of my Aunt has uncovered deep wells of emotion and memory, thus the desire to rummage through my treasure box. I have searched through the closets and finally found the beat up, old, cardboard box that holds my collected treasures. Here I keep pictures and momentos, random bits and pieces like old receipts from the 1920s and an 1895 ledger used in Great Grandfather's business. I am spending a lot of time thinking about my Aunt. She was just fifteen years old when I was born. Pictures of my childhood slowly well into consciousness, I take them out of my treasure box one by one. The pictures show a little girl with her Aunts. In each picture the little girl stares at the camera, blinking in the light. I was that little girl.

The Aunts in the pictures are smiling; they surround the little girl with love, with attention. The Aunts make the little girl a dress made completely from maple leaves that they pick from the trees as they weave. The little girl stands very still as the Aunts weave a magic gown, leaf by leaf, around her small body. The little girl lets the Aunts touch her: with their hands, with their love. The Aunts laugh, they smile. If there are real fairies in the forests of my childhood, they are my Aunts.