So, the title of her blog, and the title alone, brought back such amazing memories of my own crazy Great-Aunt Pearl, I thought I would share some of her highlights. I will attempt to paint her picture, as I have no photos offhand.
Aunt Pearl lived with her husband in a condo in Hollywood, Fla. And they lived with her sister, and her husband. Originally. Eventually, though, it was just Aunt Pearl living it up.
This woman would literally cheer me on and clap and videotape me performing such hit classics as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and the well cherished "Alphabet Song." Her face would light up, just as if I were Ed McMahon ringing her doorbell with a huge check. (I am assuming that would be her absolute end-all.) She never ate dinner past 4:30 pm, because why would anyone miss the chance to partake in the Early Bird Special? And her favorite place to "dine" was: Sizzler's! It may not have been the greasy cheese/garlic bread concoction. It was most certainly not the proteins, which she so happily skipped over. It did, however, have something to do with her previously unawakened love of theft. No matter how much we explained that "All You Can Eat" infers that it is while the person is at the restaurant.
Now, had she been one of those eccentric old ladies shoving her half-eaten dinner roll in her purse so as not to see it go to waste, fine. If she had been an enormously nutty woman scooping in pasta salad into Ziploc bags, a security guard would have felt pity. But she can with not one, but two, empty tote bags. And she filled them with bananas. I am not sure why she ate s many bananas, or if she felt that they were overpriced in the supermarket. I know for sure my grandmother offered to buy her bushels of bananas just to get her to stop. But she wanted "free" bananas. And she would walk with such purpose up to the fruit counter, and walk back double fisting them. Sit, endure a minute of our moans and groans, and then get up and do it again.
We eventually stopped entertaining her and switched the options up. She could take handfuls of fortune cookies, but that was where the line was drawn. She worked in a hair salon, leaving her house every morning at 5:30 am to catch the right bus, to wash hair up until the month she died. She did not need the money, but just loved being busy and chatting with people. And if you are done with all of your meals halfway before the afternoon, maybe catching a 5:30 am bus isn't so daunting.
She started giving her furniture away, as her fears of robbery increased. Her high rise was safe, and she was high up off of the ground, but she was still sure people wanted her furniture. So, ready for this? Instead of letting people take her things, she gave them away. It made me sad that by the time she died, she had a single twin bed, two dressers, and folding chairs in her house. But it made her feel accomplished, so who can argue?
When I helped clean her apartment out, which she had obviously given us a hand with, her bathroom cabinets with filled with full Benadryl packages. And not a few. She may or may not have ripped off a delivery man once. There was at least sixty full and unopened Benadryl boxes. A hundred-ish rolls of toilet paper. Minimal clothing and jewelry, the plastic furniture. And the strangest find: every one of her dresser drawers was filled with Lottery tickets. She bought at least 20 a week that we knew of, apparently, it had been more. And she never won. We joked how many millions she could have won by investing it. We joked that we should all be thankful she was nowhere near Atlantic City or Vegas.
Hopefully, everyone can have someone like Pearl sprinkled into their lives. She, even in her memory, is color and life and comedy and love.
And I hope that on whatever cloud she is perched on, there are bananas and Benadryl and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment