AUNT HAZEL
Hazel was my mother’s younger sister. From the stories I have been told she was a free thinker and an independent teenager. I guess that’s why I liked her so much. She encouraged me to not be part of the status quo and to go after what I wanted. I spent 6 months with her when she was pregnant with her second child. She was having medical problems and I went to help with the family. She taught me how to milk goats and take care of a family I had been in boarding school and didn’t know much about such things.
Later after I got married I decided to go to Europe with my husband and work for the Army, she said go for it, even though my husband was against it. We route many letters back and forth; she would help keep my spirits up when things weren’t going well in the country and it looked like civilians would be deported out of Europe. When I got back to the states she was one of the first people I went to see. When my mother died at 45, Aunt Hazel became my confidant and mentor. I could go to her with any problem I had from marriage counseling to child-rearing. She was my best friend after my husband decided he wanted someone else and brought his lover home with him after his tour in Korea.
We both had a love of sewing and she helped me with making clothes for my kids to home décor. Being a single mother of 3, living on a small stipend from the Army didn’t leave much for extras. We were living on our family’s farm at the time. I made all the kid’s clothes I could and became very creative with acquiring food. What we couldn’t grow in the garden we got from neighbors. I would load the little ones in the wagon and we would walk to the next farm and buy milk and eggs.
Aunt Hazel would send me recipes and give me ideas on how to make ends meet. She would send me things that had been my mother’s, as after mom died we didn’t get anything from our stepfather. Mom didn’t have a probated will so even though we were supposed to get the farm we didn’t. Our stepfather sold it and we got nothing. Hazel helped me through that heartache also. She encouraged me to find a church and get involved with the kids.
Over the years she was a constant source of encouragement. She was always there when I needed someone to talk to. Later when I decided to leave Missouri to look for work she invited me to come stay with her and look for work in the quad-cities where she lived. I have fond memories of seating in her farmhouse kitchen, around the potbellied stove drinking red zinger tea and reading the pages of harpers bazaar that she had papered the walls with.
We would spend hours in the basement quilting lap blankets for the soldier’s home. She taught me to always think beyond myself, and what I could do for others. Aunt Hazel is gone now also but I still think of all the happy times we had. Everyone says I look just like her, at a family reunion one of my cousins brought his kids over and they wanted to know why I looked so much like their grandma.
I have often wondered if we can be so in-tune with someone that we start to look like them. I would like to think that I am that way with my Lord. That people can see Him in me and the things I do. If you would like to know my Jesus send me a comment and I will get back to you and tell you about Him. He is the best mentor you can ever have.
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