Everyone Needs a Crazy Aunt

 

Mary with Robin

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. 

Robin was my shadow

 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.

Fannie, Frances, Virginia, Mary, Dixie & Ophelia Colley

  

 

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.