Aunt Margaret

Bet that’s a blast from the past, huh?  Haven’t heard that name in awhile.  She died a few simweeks back.  I still miss her loads and think about her everyday.

Dad’s autobiography coming out – and the fact that in it he mentions Aunt Margaret quite a bit -- got me to thinking about her.  Anyway, I inherited her laptop and I was going through her things, and I discovered she was in the process of writing her own autobiography when she died.  I also came across a few photos of her when she was a young girl.  Like this one.

She had bright red hair and freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was a natural redhead as was my grandpa, although her hair seems to have been a lighter shade – possibly because of her very blond mother.  Sometimes I wish I were a redhead, even though I’ve heard that blondes are supposed to have more fun. 

Here’s another.  That’s her with my dad.  It’s one of the rare pics I’ve found of dad wearing glasses. 

Even though my dad’s autobiography came out and it’s a runaway best seller and there’s already talk of a movie, I’m much more interested in what Aunt Margaret had to say, especially since in life, she didn’t say much – except in her books.  What was she hiding? 

In the excerpts I saw, she talks about grandpa a lot, how close she was to him and how devastated she was when he died. 

She also talks about this boy who was her only friend back then, Skip Broke.  She wonders if Skip was her friend only because he felt sorry for her.

 

I found it kind of ironic that Skip looked a lot like Dad did when he was younger.  Maybe Aunt Margaret saw a little bit of her old friend in my dad. 

This is the farmhouse where my aunt was born and grew up.  I’ve heard it was recently put up on the Simnational Register of Historic Places.  It was a little 2 bedroom place that was pretty much out of the way of everything.  Looked very peaceful there, what with the river running right by it.  But inside, Aunt Margaret writes, it was anything but peaceful.

Her parents fought constantly, about everything.  They eventually split up, prompting grandpa’s move to Sunset Valley.  As far as I could tell, she never saw her mother again. 

In fact, she says she was coming from Carlotta Lobos’ house doing homework and playing on the swing set when grandpa told her they were getting a divorce. 

Reading, she says, was her escape.  She knew as a very young girl that she wanted to be a writer.