Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Saturday, March 4, 2006

Yesterday I wrote about Mother’s older sister Ruth. And today, I am writing about her younger sister, Margaret. Today, after all, is Aunt Margaret’s birthday, and I will think of her all day, as I do on the birthdays of the people I love.

As Aunt Ruth was the strict, disciplined type, and my mother was the classic middle child—the rebellious “wild child” of the Olesen family—my Aunt Margaret was the baby, the charmer of the brood. She is the sister who had 17 gentlemen callers at the age of 16. She is the sister whom Mother recalls would always get her hair rolled at night (no matter how late she came in from a date); and, to hear Mother tell it, Aunt Maggie never left the house without dressing impeccably. She is the sister who was the biggest and most accomplished flirt and who apparently made male hearts flutter.

And though Aunt Maggie was the most feminine of the lot—preferring silk and satin to denim and cotton—she is the one who longed for a daughter to dress and spoil and fix her hair but bore only three sons. (As fate would have it, of course, my Mother wanted a son but got only two girls.) As a child, I sometimes dreamed that Aunt Margaret was my mother, because she was so soft around the edges. Because you always felt wonderful when you were around her.

I have many happy childhood memories of visiting Aunt Maggie and Uncle Charles Corbin’s home in Macon, Georgia, where my maternal grandmother, Granny (Esther Mitchell Olesen), also lived. Probably Aunt Maggie was so special to me because she meant the world to my own Mother, and Mother and I were so close back then that I just loved unquestioningly anyone Mama loved.

I’ll never forget one visit back in the 1960s to that brick ranch house on Hillandale Circle. What I remember about that particular occasion is when we left and stepped into the car, Aunt Maggie came up to bid us goodbye. She handed Jane and me each what you would call today a “goodie bag.” It was a small paper sack full of candy, gum and treats for the long hours ahead on the road. It was something extra, something unexpected, something you didn’t have to do.

What is exceptional about this memory—what makes this moment stand out in my mind so clearly four decades later—is that I’d never received a goodie bag before in my life. (Oh, how the world has changed. Today my son gets so many goodie bags, on every conceivable occasion: birthday parties, school parties, Halloween, Christmas, Easter. It’s a problem: what to do with all this candy? How do we put it to good use without applying it to our bellies and hips?)

But I digress. Aunt Margaret is and was the master of the thoughtful gesture, able to put herself in someone else’s shoes—even a child. Today I toast and celebrate my witty, wonderful and, yes, my brilliant Aunt Margaret.

After her husband of 53 years passed away back in 1995, Aunt Maggie found another wonderful man to love: Sid Raley. She and Uncle Sid were married in 2001. So today, Aunt Maggie, happy birthday to you. And, Uncle Sid, be sure to bring her flowers!