I've found this just now, among other things I wrote years and years ago for a memoir class. I loved to read it again and thought I'd share it :)
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I'm going to write about someone I don’t really remember a lot about, but I am so proud to have someone like her in the family tree, that I have to write about her.
I would like to introduce you to a formidable woman, my great aunt.
She was one of twelve children, sister of my grandfather, aunt to my father.
I remember her as very tall, taller than most people in the family, which wasn’t much of a stretch (hehe) given that almost everyone in the family was vertically challenged. She was tall and broad shouldered, with stern features, and gorgeous silver grey hair that she piled up on top of her head in a mass of whirls.
I did some limited research before writing this, and she was the only one of the 12, as far as I can tell, who never got married.
My great aunt was the only woman in the family tree who had a job listed on the genealogy site: she was a midwife.
We visited her once when I was a child, I think it was in the early seventies, as my memories are hazy like a young child’s.
She must have been in her sixties at the time, and she was still working as a midwife.
She lived in an apartment in a new suburb of Rotterdam, living in one of the newly built areas filled with apartment buildings.
I only remember one room in that house, the room dedicated to her job. The walls were lined with glass cabinets filled with curious gleaming instruments. I think she had a uniform, I distinctly remember something white was hanging on a hook next to the door.
She had a large bag for all her instruments sitting on a table so she could pick it up whenever she was called to go deliver a baby.
I remember the smell in the room still, a combination of musty and cleanliness. I don’t remember the rest of her house, other than that it was big, I just remember the room with all the curious, shining silver instruments, and I remember the view over the newly built apartments surrounding her building.
Another vivid memory I have of her is from when she came to stay with us one day.
She had a bag that I loved, silly that I remember that. It was a travel bag with a large shiny zipper and a lock that closed over the top of the bag.
I had to go to the bathroom during one of the nights of her visit, and slipped into the hallway. And there she was, having gone to the bathroom just before me, backlit by the bathroom light. She wore a white nightgown, and her usually swirled up hair now hung loose over her back.
It was so long, it fell way past her hips and was really wavy.
I thought she was an angel at first, a frightening one, as she still had that stern look on her face. She brushed past me into the room she slept in and the next day she was prim and proper again.
She really loved my dad, I think, because she wanted him to inherit some things. But when she died, years later, her two sisters and their husbands emptied the house overnight, only giving my father some family pictures saying (all teary eyed) that my aunt would have wanted him to have them.
He was so mad about that. I don’t remember if he ever visited his aunts again.
I really wish he had inherited some of that cabinet of curiosities, and I wish I knew more stories about her, because I really loved her. To me, she was a lady.