A World of Strange

Aunt Genie, born Eugenia Louisa Marigold and the only surviving child of a union no one was allowed to speak of in my grandmother's house, taught us to build sand castles and paper airplanes and how to fly kites high above St. Mary's Bay. She was nimble fingered and could out knit and out stitch every member of the Ladies' Guild. She told stories of magical kingdoms under the sea where mermaids and starfish frolicked, striped fish rode sea horses into great battles and everyone lived on honey cakes and cream and never grew old. She wore bells on her ears and carried butterscotch in her pockets, always colored her nails in pastel and was usually barefoot. She captured hearts as easily as a child and could charm the wings off a fly if she took the notion.

She was called erratic, eccentric, colorful - Sparrow said she lived in a world of strange but no one disputed her kindness or sweet nature. Life was too loud and too harsh for Genie and she found her refuge in make believe and imagination. She was delicate minded and fragile in body, people said, and if she chose to cloak herself in fairy dust and rose tinted glasses, it harmed no one. She befriended the outcasts, the disliked, the lonely and the distracted, seeing in them the same qualities she saw in everyone, looking harder and deeper for the good, taking the time to explore their differences. She refused to write anyone off or demean them. Strays of all kind, human and animal alike, seemed to be drawn to her and she welcomed them all.

She lived alone in a rented room crowded with color - scarves and beads and embroidery decorated the walls, a rainbow maze of fabric swatches hung from hooks attached to the ceiling. There were scented candles and glass canning jars of marbles on the shelves, balls of bright yarn spilled out of the small closet, pieces of stained glass hung in the windows and made prisms on the whitewashed floor. In exchange for light housekeeping and three half days of child care, Genie got free wood for the pot bellied stove, kitchen privileges and a safe place to live and be herself. She tended her window box pansies, fed and tamed deer from her tiny back porch, filled scrapbooks with glossy magazine pictures of mountains and snowscapes and high fashion models amid the lights of big cities.
She saved shells and driftwood and slept on a pile of patchwork quilts, her only furniture being a high backed rocking chair and a folding table, a full length mirror covered with pale blue sheer material of unknown origin, a single chest of drawers - painted bright green with even brighter yellow and blue stripes - and an empty bookcase, strangely out of place for its simplicity and uncolored shelves.

Here, Aunt Genie wrote random lines of poetry on the backs of envelopes, knitted doll clothes that she gave away, held tea parties with imaginary guests and entertained island children with fables and dress up games, feeding us tomatoes and purloined spice cookies from the kitchen cabinets. She taught us to live, to dance, to imagine and dream, to celebrate the impossible and cast off small minds and suspicious looks. Reality didn't appeal to her so she made up her own - and shared it generously.

Behold individuality and self expression. Who is to say that each is no more than garden variety, borderline madness on a short leash?