Aunt Nellie's List

Beyond the grey, weathered fence, the beauty of the white dogwood tree stood in full bloom. Sunlight, like flashlights in a forest, skipped across the petals. Tall pine trees stood behind it, framing the delicate tree.

For a minute, my mind wandered into those tall trees and I walked barefoot. Again a little girl, I felt the warm blanket of pine needles between my toes--- a blanket so think a squirrel could run across not making a sound.

Inside my kitchen, the sun sparkled in the dog's water bowl throwing diamond darts on the strawberry wallpaper.  While the sun danced and played games, I whirled like a dervish in my own performance ---moving!

I had a lot of tasks to complete, with one list on my computer, another near the phone in the hall, and a third one in the car. It was quite overwhelming. Will I ever fill them all? One on my desk reminded me not to forget the water hose and rose trellis.

Twenty-six years ago Trevor and I married in the white-steepled Willowbend Church in the small town where I was born.  Two weeks from now we'd be living there. Trevor had decided to deed his medical practice to a younger partner.  Right now he was downtown packing his office.

The best part of the move for me? Daddy's only sister and mother's favorite relative lived there.. Aunt Nellie was everyone's favorite---her neighbors, those at the church,and those at the town's "Soup Kitchen for Hungry Hearts".I was her namesake, Julie Nell.\

She lost Uncle Frank twenty years earlier but continued managing the farm.. When I was ten, I decided to gather the same-size rocks from the gravel street and line the path to her front door. When she came out she hugged me and told me I had created a "walkway like in a storybook". That was the best thing she could have said since my favorite thing was for us to read together.

Early on she'd let me pick any book from her full bookcase, and run sit in her lap in the rocking chair and she'd read to me. As early as 4 years old, I pestered her, "Read to me, please", holding up one of the cloth books. In later years, we'd sit side by side on the sofa, me holding one half the book while she mesmerized me with her animated account of the lines she read.

One Sunday morning in church when I was five, my folks let me sit with Aunt Nellie and Uncle Frank. I had to promise to behave. I did for a while. When I wanted "to.get down on the floor", Aunt Nellie, with a mysterious demeanor, carefully eased an envelope from her Bible and drew a picture.  The picture I recognized immediately as the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Through the remainder of the sermon, I sat transfixed trying to draw a rabbit like hers.

Today, I picture her sitting on the porch that stretched across the front of their farmhouse, rocking and anxiously awaiting our 'homecoming' as she called it. All those good times I think back on as a child baking with Mother and Aunt Nellie, all three of us getting ready for Christmas! Just before Christmas one year I watched Uncle Frank load up their donkey, their family cow, Bernice, and two sheep in his trailer and he let me drive to church with them in his red pickup.  The animals completed the live nativity scene on the church lawn.

 That same year, I remember Aunt Nellie going back home one evening to bring shawls to cover the couple manning their posts in the manger scene when temperatures took a sudden drop.

Later I would be standing at the graveside with one of  Aunt Nellie's arms around my shoulder and the other holding onto my mother when we buried my dad.

Back in the kitchen, I heard the maildrop lid, "clink". I hurried down the hall with a cup towel in one hand and scooped up the mail with the other.  Relieved not to find any unpaid bills, I turned over an envelope addressed to me from Manor House. I slipped my fingers hesitantly beneath the folds of two typed pages.

     Dear Julie, it began,

     I skipped to the bottom of the second page where I saw the familiar signature .But, on this stationery?  I started reading.

     "The news of your moving back has me smiling all over,"  it began. Seems like yesterday you were sitting on the wooden seat of the swing in the backyard!" The next line really unsettled me.

    "Please don't be surprised to see my new address and don't be disappointed I didn't tell you"

     How could I not be unsettled? She's no longer at the home place? She looked forward to the hyacinths and wisteria returning every spring, and her azaleas! All summer she tended the pink sweetheart rose bushes around her gazebo. She had an old-fashioned garden full of yellow and orchid hollyhocks, purple larkspur, snapdragons, poppies, zinnias, and blue plumbago.  Forever busying herself with something or another outside, her yard was her kingdom inside the picket fence all summer and her neighbors loved it!

   The letter continued, "You must know how lucky I was to live alone as long as I did, even after losing Lucky our fine watchdog, but you see, my few needs became many. I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't tellyou how much I miss home and all the folks coming and going down our road, but I just couldn't keep up the home place.  Time's changed when you could find help on every corner.

    I stared at her words. Whatever happened to Amsey? I questioned aloud. He's been hers and Uncle Frank's handyman forever--- even kitchen-help man, and car-repair man.  He drove to town for groceries when Frank stayed down from his tractor accident. Her next sentence told me.

     When Amsey took sick last May, there was nobody to help tend the yard, the rose bushes or cut the honeysuckle away from the house, nor anyone to clean and fill the birdbath.  Seems like I was forever sweeping leaves from the front porch and picking up dead limbs and branches all down the sidewalk.

     Manor House? We would have wanted her to live with us.

     Before you get here I want to tell you: I'm not too independent lately, but things are so much better now.  Someone here drives me to all m doctor appointments.  I have good meals every day and lots of company, and interesting programs every week.  I even have a chair lift.  Bet you never thought putting my hair up in braids would be a chore, did you?

     How I loved watching her fix her braids to encircle her head every day.  When I turned ten, I got to brush her hair at night.  I could hardly believe how long her chestnut hair grew. She could sit on it! I rushed and brushed my pigtails every night, but my hair never grew longer than midway down my back.

    Her last line read, "We have so much catching up to do when you get settled!

     With all my love,                                                                                                                                             Your Aunt Nellie"

     I leaned back into the chair in the kitchen. The sun continued its game, sunlight speckling the wallpaper, as I rose and went to my writing desk.

     Dear Aunt Nellie,

       Only two weeks and we'll be there! I'm so excited.  Now tell me, what can I send you in the meantime?                                                                                                                                                Clouds cropped the azure sky as I drove up the hill to the post office to mail her letter.

Two days later, the phone rang, a voice on the line scolding me. I do not need a thing. I don't wear the clothes I have  My best present is you and Trevor coming here to live.  As soon as you catch your breath, hurry over to see me. My eyesight is a bit of a problem. A friend came yesterday to type up this list."

    List? I have lists for everyone: the paper boy, the movers, and the phone man, too.       ........................................................................................................

         A radiance permeated the room while I read her list.

    "So my dear Julie, here's what I really need:

   1.  Help me write some notes.

   2.  Read the Bible to me. 

   3.  Sort through my pictures.

   4.  Sing some of the old hymns with me.

    5.  Pick some flowers from the old garden. (no one's living there)

   6.   Remind me of so many things I used to know.

   7.   Bring me up to date don't the outside world. 

   8, Pray with me. I'm doing a lot of talking to God these about folks on the other side. 

       With all my love,                                                                                                                                               Your Aunt Nellie

        .......

       * and I said to myself---  That's a list I can hardly wait to fill!