God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves
another. -- William Shakespeare
My aunt Nancy was a wild but business minded broad. She
lived in Nevada in the 1950’s and the family folklore whispers that, for a time there, she
owned and operated a brothel with her husband Gale. Nancy was the first daughter but the second
child born to my maternal grandmother. From the time that I was old enough to
stand, I don’t remember a time when she didn’t have a lit cigarette in her hand
and a genuine yet mischievous smile on her face. As a child, I adored her. She
was loud, could curse like a trucker and had natural boobs that rivaled Dolly
Parton. Her laugh could shake the chandelier and along with her lit cigarette,
she usually also had a glass with whiskey and ice in it. Each year, she hosted a
huge party at her house. She brought in regulation size craps and blackjack
tables and hired real dealers to run the tables. I learned to shoot dice at her
parties. I also tried vodka for the first time and brought my first boyfriend
at the tender age of 15 to one of these parties.
When she was a young girl, Nancy had polio in her right leg. She
suffered terribly and my grandmother spent nights placing alternating scalding
hot and icy cold compresses on her leg. Nancy survived the polio but her leg remained shrunken forever the size of an 8-year
old leg, a reminder of that painful episode in her life. She was teased at
school, at a time when girls had to wear dresses, her misshapen leg so obvious
to the world. As an adult, she never wore skirts or dresses and in many ways,
she remained a frightened and hurt little girl, encased in a tough and tumble woman.
She lived hard and, I think, never felt entirely loved by my grandmother, who
left Nancy, my uncle Ted and their father in Ohio to run off to California and follow another man that she had fallen in love with. I miss her sometimes
and think of her often, she was a role model for me in many ways. She apologized
rarely and when she focused on you, the whole world melted away. She was full
of opinions and had her way of doing everything. My appreciation of her,
unfortunately, comes too late to express to her in person, but her direct
approach to life remains with me to this day.
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