I always think my Aunt Irene was grossly misunderstood in the family. She was a married-in aunt, married to my mother’s brother Sammy. Theirs was a late-in-life love affair. They met in Atlantic City in the early 1950’s, they in their ripening forties. Atlantic City and the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York were the singles hang-outs for Jews in those years, the equivalent of J-date, before computers. I have a photo of them walking hand-in-hand on the Atlantic City boardwalk, smiling, aglow. My Uncle Sammy so tall and gallant, Aunt Irene quite luscious in her shockingly short shorts and sunhat (she was terminally freckled).

Everyone would have been very happy for Sammy, I mean already in his forties and no wife, except for one glaring problem. Irene lived in Philadelphia. For the Bronx Shapiro clan Philadelphia might as well have been China. Who went to Philadelphia? No one! If it was west of the Hudson River, who needed it?

There was no question of Irene relocating to New York. It would be Sammy who would be moving. Irene had an unmarried sister, Rose, gentle as a summer breeze. Rose came with the marriage. Rose never married, lived with them for 40 years. I always thought she was a nun, which of course she wasn’t, being Jewish and all, but the only unmarried women I knew were nuns and women whose husbands had died.

My mother never really liked Irene. It could have been a clan thing or something I never knew about and never could get my mother to admit to, but probably it was because Irene took Sammy away from the family, over the river and through New Jersey to who knew where.

On occasion we would excursion to Philadelphia to visit them. Irene was always so loving and adoring of me and my siblings. She felt to nearly bursting with excitement when we arrived. When we were kids they lived in a little row house, complete with a garden in which Irene grew marigolds. Their house smelled of pancakes cooking, gefilte fish, and Pledge. Irene was a cleaner, a vitamin taker (before this was done), an organizer (she was probably a Virgo), and she kept Kosher-in and out of the house.

She adored my father, which I realize later was because he had the same kind of family dutifulness that she did. Family was priority to him, first and foremost. Everyone else was suspect. And when Sammie was hit by a bus and broke both his thighs, laying him up for the remainder of his life, which turned out to be nearly 30 years, my parents were the only ones in the extended family who insisted on visiting all the way to Philadelphia – in the days Sammy was in the hospital and the endless months he was in rehab. My father ran the early shift of life so we were in Philly in time for breakfast, which always impressed Irene.

Rose had died by then. Sammy and Irene moved to an apartment with an elevator as Sammie could no longer do stairs. Irene took over everything, in her highly strung, impeccably right manner.

Irene was keen on injustice, having suffered her share. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and became somewhat of a vigilante in her neighborhood for cleanliness and respect. They never had children and when I visited them Irene would give me personal instructions on things I still practice:

Put nail polish on from the base of the nail upward, not horizontally across the nail.

The sink is not really clean until the faucet is buffed to a silvery glow.

Just because other people are slobs doesn’t mean you have to be.

Educate people on the value of taking responsibility for shared living spaces, like the apartment and the neighborhood.

Don’t be afraid to speak out on what you think is right, even if everyone disagrees.

Have a gorgeous bed (she always had a brass one).

Take care of the ones you love.

Wait for the right one to come along.

Grow flowers, no matter the size of your plot.

So in my fifties I realize I am more like my Aunt Irene than I thought I would be. In my quirky eccentricities, in my vigilante behavior to keep my neighborhood clean and quiet, and especially  voicing my convictions in the face of opposition, my obsession with flowers and gorgeous beds, my unflagging willingness to care for those I love, the nail and sink care. There you have it.

So when I came across Lois Meltzer’s The Murderous Urges of Ordinary Women, I thought immediately of Aunt Irene. Courageous, ballsy to the extreme, relentless in her pursuit of her convictions, passionate to right the wrongs of the only world in which she had control – her apartment and her block in northeast Philly.  I so fell in love with this book I tracked the author down and interviewed her. Clearly Lois has had some Aunt Irenes in her life as well. Check out our chuckle-filled interview at http://PriestessTV.com. Click on the Audio Interview page and there you will find the podcast of the interview. Leave a comment so I know you visited. Any Aunt Irenes in your life?

I raise my bouquet of flowers and dust mop to all the Aunt Irenes in the world. If she were alive today she’d be blogging her brains out on what’s right and what’s not. And would she ever be busy. Gotta go! The garbage men were just here and I have to make sure they took every last bit away. And then I have to scold the college boys for smoking and then tossing the butts on the ground. Will my work never be doe? Not in this messy world.