Where We Are This Week

Hope and Change: Lessons of Living from my Aunt.

When the kids in my family were younger, we’d line up on the couch and various uncles and aunts would give us gifts for the holidays.

My sister and I both had December birthdays so we’d get Christmas presents and birthday presents at the same time — effectively doubling our haul.

There wasn’t a ton of us, but it’s evident that once the number gets to a certain point, it’s easier to give the same thing to every kid. I think I remember getting gift cards to restaurants or maybe even iTunes gift cards. Remember those?

Cash or cash surrogates are always lame unless there’s a little more thought put into it. If you need a new pair of shoes but your mom doesn’t know what size you wear anymore, a certificate earmarked for some new buddies (as my dad calls them) is welcome. Forking over a twenty-dollar bill, however, is tasteless and impersonal.

My aunt, whom I loved, acquiesced to the efficacy of giving money as a gift but refused to do it so plainly. Every year, once we’d entered the realm of cash presents, she had some clever and charming way of presenting it to us.

Once, packages with frozen dollar bills inside were given to us teenagers. Cold hard cash. Another year, we were given a weekly pill box with cash stuffed inside each compartment. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the phrase that accompanied that one.

In 2008, she gave us little jars that looked like Barack Obama devotional candles. They had the multicolored HOPE design that dominated the Obama presidential campaign wrapped around them. On the inside were stacks of coins. Hope and change.

They exist. I was less surprised with the fact that they exist than how easy it was to find them.

We lost her shortly afterward to breast cancer, but the smile she would wear when we’d figured out the joke is etched into my memory. She made the world shine a little brighter while she was here. I still think of her often and maybe, only now, can I start to imagine the grief that my uncle and her children had to bear.

I remember her having that same smile when we visited her in the hospital close to the end. She was weak and sick but she smiled like she still had something to give us — like there was still a punchline to be heard. Her commitment to joy was remarkable.

You don’t get to choose how you’re remembered, but all these years later, I think my memory of her matches the person she was — which I think is the most anyone could ever ask for. Moreover, whenever she’s mentioned, it’s as if we’re all remembering the same, unique puzzle piece which would suggest that not only was she good, she was consistent.

I still have the Atlanta Braves blanket she gave to me when I was little, but I suspect that, eventually, it will degrade and fray over time. It’s the same one my boyhood dog would sleep on with me. The cash, the dollars, and the coins have long since been spent; on cd’s that have likely been lost and meals that have been forgotten.

But I’ll always have her memory, and I’ll always have hope and change.

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I mentioned that you don’t get to choose how you’re remembered. Well, similarly, you don’t get to choose the moment someone is called to mind. I was watching Kamala Harris deliver her DNC speech thinking how blatantly she’s copied Barack Obama’s speech pattern when I thought of his early slogans then, my aunt.

My family has always been right-leaning so it’s somewhat ironic that, for me (and I’m willing to bet for my sister), her memory is permanently attached to that empty bit of sloganeering.

Originally, I was going to write about Harris’ address to the Democratic Party, RFK Jr’s prospective withdrawal from the race, and the economy, but it doesn’t seem right. There will be time for all that.

To a better next week,

And to my Aunt Pam,

Cheers,

~FDA