A personal remembrance of my beloved Aunt Annette, my creative muse. She has been gone for almost fourteen years, but I still think about her every day.
As a child, I always had a net to catch me when I had a challenge. This safety net was my beloved Aunt Annette, my mother’s older sister.
Since my earliest childhood moments, my mother’s sister was ever-present in my life and the lives of my sister and brother. Annette never married nor had a family of her own, so she was always close by. She spent years caring for my grandparents at 186 Tuxedo, 38C Wabeno, and then after they passed away she lived with my parents at 20 Warwick.
Annette was my backstop.
Someone I could always go to with questions about homework, movies, cooking, opera, baseball, or strategies for winning at Scrabble. I often joke that in hindsight, Annette was like the Internet. She knew things instantly that others would have to look up. Today we Google information; before Google, we asked Annette.
To this day, my mother Bea often says, “I wish I could ask Annette; she’d remember.”
A Proud Luddite
Annette never accepted the computer in her life, and I think the Internet scared her. She had her Underwood typewriter to write her plays and lyrics, and she refused to accept that you could write on a computer because where was the paper?
I wanted to teach her about all the benefits and advantages of computer programs like Word and how you could so easily edit without witeout to cover over typos.
Annette needed the click and the clack of her typewriter and the graceful slide of the return bar. Over time, I realized that trying to change her ways was futile and that just because something is new and more efficient doesn’t make it better.
Remarkable Memory
Yet Annette seemed to know things with her remarkable memory that to this day confounds me. Whether it was the entire cast from the original stage performance of West Side Story to the director of Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) to how many games Tom Seaver won in 1969 with the Miracle Mets. (I had to Google it – twenty-five).
But it was beyond baseball, theatre, or movies- Annette knew facts about any century in English history or the politics from of the present day.
On her only overseas trip to England with my brother Mitchell and sister-in-law Leslie, just weeks before Annette’s death, she corrected the London Tour Guide. She just seemed to know everything.
There is a saying that an elephant never forgets.
I remember thinking as a child that elephants would call Annette when they couldn’t remember something.
Although my parents were ever-present in my life, Annette was there to play with me. And by play, I mean I had her undivided attention. The enduring gift of her attention will remain with me my entire life.
I have vivid childhood memories of being at 186 Tuxedo Parkway in Newark, where she lived with my grandparents. Annette and I would sit on the porch with a snack table with paint and a water-filled mayonnaise jar, and we would create art together. I didn’t have any prodigal talent, but I enjoyed looking and learning, and she had the patience to teach me the basics of line, color, and form.
We would paint and listen to The Saturday opera brought to us by Texaco on public radio. Her ability to be attentive was legendary, and she had the natural sense to make me feel like I was the only person in the world. To this day, I am confident that my strong sense of self-confidence had an essential link to those afternoons together.
| A highbrow afternoon of art and opera would slide into the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy’s low-brow humor. We watched Duck Soup and Monkey Business, and Annette explained the art and craft of writing a screenplay. If the Mets weren’t on, we would continue to watch late into the night as the British comedies would start to show up. I know that I first met the cast of Monty Python sitting next to Annette as she helped translate from Queen’s English so that I could follow the subtle silliness. She interpreted strong Cockney accents and West End dialogue so that I could understand it. Peter Sellers, Danny Kaye, and Charlie Chaplin were regular friends who joined us most Saturday nights. |
Now We Are Cooking
I am confident that Annette was the first person to put a spatula in my hand.
Although my Mom is a fabulous cook, Annette gave me my first lesson cooking- it was probably a scrambled egg. I can hear her telling me that you can always tell a great chef if they can make a simple dish. I ate up this knowledge and wanted more. It was around my seventeenth birthday that she introduced me to Julia.
Annette gave me my first cookbook- Mastering The Art of French Cooking that remains one of my prized possessions. From the Shutter to the Butter reads the inscription Annette wrote on the cover. And for those who know me, that little phrase sums up two of my great passions- photography and cooking.
Annette first lit a spark in me to want to cook and make excellent meals. Together we watched Julia teach us about soufflés, soubise, and sautéing.
This was a remarkably nurturing experience that has shaped me in so many ways as I prepared for life on my own at college and then with my own family. These cooking lessons were life lessons that will always be a part of who I am.
When I went to college at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Annette made me a card with a Philadelphia map with her favorite places from her childhood in West Philadelphia.
Each card came with a message that was both clever and caring. When I think of the time Annette spent doing this and how much we all look forward to those big envelopes with the cardboard backing- it takes my breath away. These cards were another way that she could express herself and demonstrate the importance of being original. The cards weren’t only for birthdays.
As writer and lyricist, Annette never gained the type of public acclaim she deserved, although she worked with people like Steve Allen. She has inspired many of us to write- and to work hard at it so that we too can tell our stories.
A Better Writer
After her passing, I knew that I wanted to work hard at becoming a writer to both honors her memory and release in me the emotion and love that telling a personal story can set free.
I was lucky to live for so many years with this net to catch me and help me know myself. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could ask just one more question.
Somedays, when I’m telling my Mom about something remarkable that my grandson Bodhi has done, I’ll hear echoes of my Aunt’s voice. “Bodhi knows his ABC’s or he has figured out how to build a lawnmower with his legos.” What would Annette have said about Bodhi? I’m starting to sound like Annette.
I am so fortunate to have had Annette to catch me.
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