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Mary with Robin
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Everyone needs a crazy aunt.
I don’t think anyone thought my Aunt Mary Colley was crazy, exactly, but
they thought she was a little odd. (For
those of you not raised in the south, that’s a way of saying you are crazy, but
in a nice way.) The first time I
encountered Truman Capote’s wonderful story, A Christmas Memory, I recognized
my aunt Mary in Miss Sook, Buddy’s eccentric cousin.
Even as a child, Mary
followed her own drummer. She was a
writer, a poet, a scholar, with a great flair for drama. She earned degrees from Agnes Scott and
Peabody colleges and taught both high school and junior college. Mary was well traveled, her husband Jimmy
having some kind of job with the Red Cross organization. They settled in
the mountains of North Carolina after his retirement and she stayed there the rest of her life, stubbornly resisting any attempt to move her back to her remaining family.
My great aunt Ophelia told the story of a morning when Mary
and her good friend Grace Thompson were reciting poetry while eating breakfast
in the Colley kitchen. A line in this particular
poem was, ”I am desolate and sick of a passion.” After about the third repetition
of that line, Mary put her hand to her forehead and cried out “I am sick, sick,
sick” at which point the cook dropped everything and rushed to find her mother,
telling her to come quick, that Miss Mary was awful sick. Ophelia also told of trips up the steep hill
just across the Duck River, where she and her friend Monette would go to make up
and act out their plays. Sometimes Mary
would accompany them and would recite poems and dramatic readings. She actually sold some of her writing when
she was in high school, earning the princely sum of $1.79 for her story. Miss Grace also laughed about their love of
drama and how they used to act out the Battle of Bunker Hill – a slightly strange
choice for a couple of girls. Of course,
her sister Ophelia also told how she and her best friend used to act out
stories and make one of their other little friends play the part of the hero
who was killed near the beginning of the story. The poor child had to lie there
dead for the rest of the play. Children
then were just as bloodthirsty as modern day children, it seems.
When Ophelia appeared on Ralph Edward’s This is Your Life,
her mother and her four sisters made the trip to California to surprise her on
the show. The producers arranged for
them to fly to Los Angeles, except Aunt Mary.
She refused to fly and had to take a train. I can’t remember how long a trip that was at
the time, but from North Carolina to California by train had to be quite a
journey in 1957. I remember that all
during the sisters’ part of the program, Mary kept blinking her eyes,
reportedly some kind of signal to her husband back home. My aunt Virginia used to shake her head about
her eccentric ways and always accused her of cutting people out of the family
photo album when she was mad at them.
When I came along, Mary was of course much older and a
married woman. When I was just a baby, she
gave my family our first collie, a beautiful dog named Robin. He watched over me for my first few years
and was a steady presence as I learned to walk holding to his white
ruff.
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Robin was my shadow
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When I was a little older, on her
trips to Centerville, she ushered me into her world of drama and magic. She convinced me that fairies lived in a behind
a large rock on the back side of our farm.
We called it our secret place and for all my years growing up, it was a
magic spot. I still don’t know what made
the perfectly smooth arch in that big rock if it wasn’t fairies. I don’t think I ever stuck my head inside to
see what was there. If Mary said it was
fairies, it was fairies.
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Fannie, Frances, Virginia, Mary, Dixie & Ophelia Colley
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I followed in her
footsteps by acting out my own favorite stories – Robin Hood was one I remember
most vividly. I built a tree house and
made a bow and arrow. It’s a wonder I
didn’t kill myself. I also made up
wildly improbable adventures, usually involving horses in some way, and solved
mysteries that rivaled The Hardy Boys down in the gullies and up in the
haylofts on the farm. I think these were
a direct influence from the Colley side of the family. Every now and then when I am telling a story,
I hear the phrasing of my Aunt Virginia, who was a master of sarcasm. The Colleys were a family of storytellers and I was
an eager disciple.
Mary was the first to seriously encourage me to write. She may have been the first adult to take me
seriously when I said I was going to be a writer. For
years, I sent her all my stories, which she critiqued and typed for me. My first thesaurus, which I still use, was a
gift from her. She sent me her worn
paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings, which I finished wearing out by
reading it over and over. We shared
favorite authors – Madeleine L’Engle, L.M. Montgomery and Gladys Taber. She told me about an encounter she had with
the Bell Witch when she taught school in Robertson County and gave me her copy
of the Bell Witch book. Her penchant for
ghost stories apparently went back into her childhood – her childhood friends
told of listening to her ghost stories in the spare bedroom during overnight visits.
I remember the time she alarmed her sisters by announcing
that she was thinking of becoming a Zen Buddhist. I didn’t know what that was but I remember
thinking that it must be pretty cool. As
far as I know, she remained a Methodist, although I don’t think she put a lot
of stock in organized religion of any kind.
I don’t recollect any conversations with her about religion, but we did
discuss the Age of Aquarius at length once.
We discussed all kinds of things, and she always treated me as an equal,
with thoughts and opinions that were just as valid as any adult’s. Perhaps most importantly, she confirmed that
it was okay to be different, to march to my own drummer.
In her older years, Mary didn’t travel beyond her immediate
neighborhood. She didn’t come back to Centerville after my grandmother, Dixie,
died. I think losing her broke her
heart. Her sisters always said that she
didn’t like change and didn’t want to witness changes in either people or
places, so she just stayed put. So, it
was a few years before she met my husband, Robert. We took a trip to the Smokies and drove over
to her home in North Carolina for a couple of days. I had talked about her so much, trying
unsuccessfully to explain her, he didn’t quite know what to expect. We had afternoon tea in her garden, and in
his typical fashion, Robert charmed her and fell in love with her himself.
I wish every child could have a crazy aunt. If not that, at least I wish every child
could have someone like my aunt who confirms the existence of magic, authenticates
their dreams and encourages their wildest desires.
