She Meant Well

I had a high school English teacher who once said, “’She means well’ is the most damning of all compliments.”  The primary reason I have remembered this for nearly 60 years is that I heard “she means well” so many times growing up as an explanation for dear Aunt Emily’s behavior.

Aunt Emily was my maternal grandmother’s sister, so she was actually my great-aunt.  She never had children, and to my knowledge, only had occasional part-time employment, so this left her with adequate time to insert herself into the lives of others in both positive and negative ways.

She was sometimes hired by wealthy families to stay with their children while the adults traveled for extended periods of time.  She was a good cook and housekeeper, but not necessarily the best with kids.  She was pretty rigid and liked to lay on guilt trips.  I remember when I was quite young that she fixed me an orange with sections arranged in pinwheel fashion, a cherry in the middle, and sprinkled with sugar; but then she made it very clear that I was supposed to be overwhelmingly grateful to her for this snack. Apparently, my thanks had not been profuse enough, and guilt took away some of the enjoyment of that orange.

On another occasion, I was with her while she ran errands.  She parked the car illegally and left me alone while she ran into the bank or store or dry cleaners.  She instructed me that if a policeman came by and started to write a ticket, I was to tell him that my aunt would be back in a few minutes.  I was terrified that a policeman might actually come by and write a ticket.  I knew I didn’t have the courage to speak up to a policeman about my strange aunt.  My plan was to crouch down and try to be invisible in the back seat.

Aunt Emily did like to put on airs.  That branch of the family was from Alsace-Lorraine which over the years was sometimes German and sometimes French.  Everyone else in the family considered themselves to be German, but Aunt Emily always insisted she was French, even though her maiden name Bischoff is rather German.  The family used to joke behind her back that the older she got, the younger she dressed.  She was quite stylish and did sometimes wear things that seemed a bit out of her age range.  She was fond of big clunky earrings and bracelets.

Although she was in most ways prim and proper, she scandalized the family by sharing the little detail that she and her husband (great-uncle Art) took baths together.  TMI in that era!

Even as a child, I was aware of friction between my grandmother and Aunt Emily.  Sisterly love was not evident.  Aunt Emily was bossy by nature, and my grandmother seemed insecure by nature, and I recall some family feuds.  Long years after they had both passed away, my mother told me one of the sources of resentment.  Aunt Emily desperately wanted a child and never had one.  My grandmother had 5 children, although one died in infancy.  Three of the surviving children had brown eyes like both parents, but one had blue eyes.  Their hidden recessive genes got together on that one.  Aunt Emily and her husband were blue-eyed.  She tried to talk my grandmother into giving her the blue-eyed boy to raise.  My grandmother was livid.  How dare she ask her to give up one of her children!  The resulting anger apparently was underlying much of the animosity that was evident for the rest of their days.

Aunt Emily did try to be helpful.  My mother was bed-ridden during two of her pregnancies, one of which occurred when I was twelve.  I always knew when Aunt Emily had been to the house to clean for my mother.  I don’t know why she did this, but when she dusted, she was in the habit of arranging all sorts of items on the windowsills.  If I came home from school and everything from my dresser (except the lamp) was on the windowsill, I knew Aunt Emily had been there.

One of my mother’s brothers told the story of a time when my grandmother was deathly ill with a very high fever, and Aunt Emily decided it was a good time to defrost and clean out the refrigerator.  He was a logical fellow who saw this as quite bizarre.  I suppose “she meant well.”  Perhaps she thought it would take people’s minds off my grandmother’s dire condition.

Aunt Emily nearly killed herself once.  She decided her cellar floor needed a good cleaning.  She had no knowledge of chemistry and figured anything could be improved with bleach.  She mixed together several cleaning products and ended up creating a toxic gas.  She was almost overcome and barely made it out of the basement.

As they aged, Aunt Emily and Uncle Art became very dependent on each other.  She was the stronger one physically, and he was the stronger one mentally.  My mother, who was the closest of their nieces and nephews, worried about them.  Aunt Emily was no longer sharp enough mentally to pay attention to whether the food in her refrigerator was still safe to eat.  Ironically, she couldn’t clean out her own refrigerator.

After more than sixty years of marriage, they ended up in the hospital at the same time and died within 24 hours of each other.  The notice of Uncle Art’s death made it in the newspaper, but Aunt Emily’s did not.  People came to the calling hours expecting to see Uncle Art, and there was Aunt Emily too. 

One never did know quite what to expect from Aunt Emily.