By M. DEMORI
Armed with beauty and a penchant for thrift and cleanliness, a woman grows old minus the things that matter most.
THE most famous person in my family is my aunt Nina. There are three qualities that have made her popular among family and friends: her beauty, her thriftiness, and her love of tidiness.
Aunt Nina keeps a noticeable, slightly faded, picture of herself when she was 17 on a side table in her bedroom. An exquisitely sweet oval face framed by short brown wavy hair. Bright almond shaped eyes and a delicate mouth. A prince would have been smitten.
Aunt Nina, however, did not marry a prince. Her husband was a very ordinary man who worked as an electrical engineer on cruise ships, thus leaving her the true queen of the home for many months of the year and for many years.
But being practically single for such extended periods of time did not bother her in the least because in truth, aunt Nina wasn’t married to her husband, she was married to her home.
Aunt Nina owned a lovely double-storey detached house which had a big garden planted with flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables. Fresh produce helped her save money; she didn’t have to buy from the market. There were also chickens for eggs and meat, and more savings, of course.
Even with a magnifying glass, one would probably not have found a speck of dust on any of the furniture, the walls, the windows, or the floor of her home. The other women in the family said she spent the whole day with a dust cloth in her hands and that her mania wasn’t worth the shine.
But I never agreed with them. I truly admired her capacity for hard work; what surprised me was that her house, although perfectly shiny, never felt warm.
It was not advisable to barge in on aunt Nina at will, for if she was busy, she would not hesitate to tell you so and ask you to leave. I, therefore, had to plan my visits carefully.
She did have a proper living room with a comfortable sofa, but the place for guests was the kitchen, more constrained and much easier to clean after they left.
The kitchen also had a large clock on the wall that was aunt Nina’s ally in making the best use of every second of daylight. You were always aware of how precious time was in her presence; you had no more than 30 minutes. Time for talking and socialising was truly a waste, with no money to be gained from it. The hours of the day were really for cleaning, tidying, painting, planting, harvesting and storing.
To make the most of her time, aunt Nina had only one child, a son who, at one stage, seemed to have a promising future.
In my late teens and before I moved overseas, I remember having some pleasant and constructive conversations with him. For a while I thought that aunt Nina had done a really good job of raising him and that we not only shared the same surname but also belonged to the same family.
Unexpectedly, however, he dropped out of university, got a clerical job, took a wife and settled into an uneventful routine – possibly, to please his mother.
Aunt Nina never travelled more than 50km from her hometown. Travelling was tiring, useless, and expensive. Besides, it would take her away from her chores and allow dust to settle on the furniture or in the corners of the floor.
I don’t think aunt Nina ever had a visitor staying over at her house in all her life. This would have been terribly burdensome as people would have most certainly displaced things and caused an unbearable waste of time.
Once, when a niece living overseas asked her to go and stay for a week, she unceremoniously declined, saying that everyone was happiest in her own home.
Aunt Nina saved on everything. She cooked the produce of her own garden and ate only at meal times. When she went to the shops, she made sure she got the best, and cheapest, of everything.
She didn’t remember birthdays nor recognised celebrations, weddings and family events. She had neither the time to attend them, nor the money to waste on gifts.
If anyone ever existed only for herself, it was aunt Nina. I did not mind her love of solitude and desire to be completely independent. I never envied her beauty, nor did I harbour hopes of a share of her supposedly large bank account. And although her spotless home was a mirror of perfection, it would never suit my own incurable tendency to scatter things everywhere.
All I waited for was a word, or gesture, that showed she cared. But it never came.
The last time I visited Aunt Nina was two years ago. At 85, she was still beautiful and had a velvety smooth complexion, albeit with some lines of time. We sat in the spotless kitchen exchanging pleasantries. And, as was her custom, a furtive glance of her bright eyes at the clock on the wall told me when it was time to leave. As she walked me to the gate, she bent now and then – not as swiftly as before, but with the same wilful determination – to pluck little blades of grass that had stubbornly defied her order for perfection and dared to grow out of the gravel pathway.
As I once again admired her relentless commitment to labour, it was hard for me to think that all her efforts would not earn her some ultimate good. I also realised that time will fill some gaps, but it will make others insurmountable.
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