Uncle Sam and Aunt Harriet: A July 4th Memory

My Aunt Harriet, so accommodating most of the time, insisted on celebrating July 4th her way. She had me load her walker into the car for a drive to the supermarket so that she herself could pick out the right buns, Brats (rhymes with "lots"), sauerkraut, condiments, and corn on the cob.  At sundown, she would supervise me at the grill, and we'd watch Public TV's Capital Fourth concert while we ate.

I was aunt-sitter in Chanhassen MN at the split-level home of my cousin Ann, whose husband Ken had outfitted the lower level for Harriet.  While Ann and Ken got away for a couple of weeks, I was warned never to leave my aunt for longer than an hour, because of her diabetes and the risk of falling.  Ann left us a strict schedule: blood sugar test at 7:30 a.m., pills, breakfast; mid-morning snack; lunch; mid-afternoon snack; blood test, pills and dinner.

Between these critical points, I re-designed my website, and walked Harriet's sweet and yappy little dog "Annie." I took a 52 - minute break each day to ride a bike around Chanhassen's streets, a route highlighted by a narrow trail through a nature reserve where, once, a tiny lemon - yellow Minnesota Gold Finch - first I'd ever seen - darted out of the brush and dipped in the air just ahead of my bike.

The routine of aunt - sitting might seem restrictive, but I look back on the two weeks as a golden time.  My life, like my recreational biking, has long been a steady round of predictable features: school semesters, seasons of the Church's liturgical calendar. But those two weeks out of my life made a charming passage, just as that little nature trail made a break in my daily round; and in that two - week passage, Aunt Harriet's special 4th was like the Gold Finch: an unexpected delight and a vivid memory. Our private celebration of national history enveloped her personal history, and still reminds me of so much that I loved in her.

Those brats and sauerkraut, so German, must've reminded Harriet of childhood in Cincinnati, where immigrant families in her neighborhood still spoke German. When she was born October 4, 1921, the German names of Cincinnati's streets had just been Anglicized in the patriotic anti-Kaiser frenzy attending our nation's entry into the Great War.

She and her younger brother lived well in the 20s, but everything changed with the Depression.  Her father, guilty of some shady dealing -- to pay for Harriet's medical needs, I've been told -- lost not only his job, but hope for getting another. Everyone else worked: Harriet sewed, her mother cleaned homes, and her younger brother sold newspapers and got work  at Proctor and Gamble.  In the Depression's worst year, her littlest brother -- my dad --  was born, asthmatic, requiring care, both constant and expensive. The rest of their lives, his two older siblings could get pretty bitter about what they'd had before the family lost it all.

But Harriet was a fighter.  Speaking at her memorial service in January 2009, my dad told the story of some bully at the bus stop lighting a match, its sulphur fumes setting off an asthma attack for him.  "Sis chased the boy all the way to his house, through his front door, up into his bedroom, and she beat him up."

[Photos: Harriet Ann, her mother Harriet ("Mamaw""), younger brother Jack, and youngest brother Tom, ca. 1990 and 1962 -- with their father Dewey Smoot ("Pop")]

She married a medical student named Bert, and, as she told it, she did all the studying to get him through Johns Hopkins in the late Forties.  By the time she met me, her toddling nephew, she was living the high life in LA, circa 1962, where her husband was surgeon to the stars.  (When Oscar - winning actor Spencer Tracy died on the operating table, Uncle Bert was one of the doctors.) Her life was still a struggle, involving alcohol, infidelity, and, by the 1980s, her husband's Alzheimer's. Her mother, recently widowed, came to help look after Bert; after he died, Harriet had to take care of her mother.

Up to that point in her story, I'd rarely seen Aunt Harriet.  I'd seen my mother's family in Cincinnati every summer of my life; but my California family was out of reach except for special occasions every few years.  Harriet liked to recall how, around age three, I tapped her awake in the middle of the night to whisper that I couldn't find my way to the potty.

Once she'd moved to the east coast, to North Carolina, I could drive up to see her and my grandmother pretty regularly.  We found we had a lot in common.  We were the family's only two Episcopalians, the only keyboard players, and the only fans of the composer Olivier Messaien.  We shared mystery stories, and she taught me some of the obscure little words and names that you need for crossword-puzzles  (ort, adit, Ara, and Ott). We loved dogs, and we enjoyed cooking, even with her restricted diet.

She moved to Minnesota when my father took my grandmother to a nursing home.

On the 4th, I asked if she minded my making a martini. Was that kosher, A.A. - wise?   No problem, she said, adding, "Gin was my drink."  I remember:  She let me have the olives from her martinis at my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.  In fact, I've always reacted to the aroma of gin the way others do to chocolate chip cookies or baby powder, as a whiff of a warm, loving childhood. She may be the source of that!

We enjoyed our Brats, tuned in the music on TV, and watched while the slow Minnesota sun took its sweet time to set.

Tonight, it's just me and Mia, and the mysterious neighbor whose home is dark and quiet except when he has buddies over for fireworks on New Year's and the 4th.  I've got my martini, my brats, my sides, and my gratitude for Aunt Harriet.