Aunt Emma lived in 1902. She was a real Gibson girl, with her tiny waist and perfectly coifed hair. In fact, she looked very much like the women you see on those reproduction Coca-Cola trays.

In retrospect I can see that her presence in our home was indicative of our time. It was the Bicentennial, and The Waltons had as much of a following as Taxi Driver. In spite of a general Nixon-related cynicism, everyone was into national pride that year. I remember I badly wanted these leather go-go boots with big red and white stripes that wrapped around your legs, with royal blue uppers and a white star on each toe. Oh, I loved it all. Red, white and blue patchwork granny skirts, patriotic seersucker pants, big floppy star-covered hats. There was an entire revolution embodied in our clothes.

Aunt Emma, in spite of her antique appearance, turned 30 that year. She had my sister’s room because Janice was gone again. She’d been running away since just before her 13^th birthday. Four years of not knowing where she’d call from next, wanting money for bail or whatever. Four years of my dad stopping at church every night to light a candle for her. At the moment she was living with some group called the Children of God. My mom thought that must be a good thing, and perhaps Janice would finally straighten out.

My aunt never seemed to know about Janice or anything else at all modern or difficult. She stayed mostly in her room surrounded by turn-of-the-century furniture, books, bedding, and other miscellaneous articles, some of which belonged to my great-grandmother and some of which my dad found at various yard sales and swap meets. He was very fond of his sister.

On certain beautiful days, when the wind blew the sky clear and the California sun shone pleasantly down, Aunt Emma seemed to awaken inside, and she’d start cleaning things. Conveniently forgetting the modern aspect of her surroundings, she would dust and scrub and mop the floor on her hands and knees, kind of like Granny in The Beverly Hillbillies. I remember especially a day when the air was still for a moment and I was drawn to the window by the boosh…boosh…boosh of Aunt Emma’s broom hitting an old rug she’d hung on the clothes line. Caught momentarily in a ray of sunlight, she rested while the golden dust swirled around and embraced her. I thought of Tinkerbell and Mary Poppins, of all the magic that I wanted to be true yet knew not to be true. I thought that I loved Aunt Emma every bit as much as my father did.

But that was the year she left us, at the end of, on the very tail of, our patriotic frenzy. It was after Christmas, when the Waltons had once again managed to pull the family together for one more year, even though you sensed that people were getting tired of the Waltons, and even the Waltons were getting tired of the Waltons. People were sick of "’Night John Boy, ‘night Mary Ellen." Personally, I was sick of, "You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?"

In fact, it was almost New Year’s Day when we lost my aunt, because I remember Olivia Walton got a perm that week, and I thought I should get one and change my whole life. I was almost 13, and since I showed no signs of running away and joining the Children of God, I didn’t get much attention from anybody except Aunt Emma. She thought a permanent wave would ruin me, so she put my hair up like hers. I looked in her faded mirror and felt soft, timeless, and ethereal. Aunt Emma and I decided to go on a promenade together, and take a pie to one of the shut-ins from church.

I remember…I remember being so proud! I walked with my head high, and I held my granny skirt delicately off the ground. A woman passed us and caught my eye with an indulgent smile.

Then all in a moment I stopped to look back at the woman, who stopped to look back at a noisy car blaring American Pie with the windows down. The driver gunned his engine. I heard squealing brakes and witnessed shock on the lady’s face. I turned back to the street as if I were moving in a dream and everything was in slow motion. I saw Aunt Emma with a look of horror as the car confronted her in the midst of the crosswalk. I saw the faded orange Datsun skidding, turning its tail toward me. My eyes dropped to the black and white POW MIA sticker peeling on the bumper. Then it was still. I felt nauseated and my nose tingled with impending tears and the smell of burning rubber. There were Aunt Emma’s feet protruding from beneath the car. She didn’t have ruby slippers, but the most antique-looking pair of shoes my mother could find. The bottoms said, "Made in China."

I didn’t get a perm that year, or the next, and I’ve never been able to do my hair the way Aunt Emma had it that one time. Janice came home without any extra clothes or even a pair of underwear, and took her old room back. She threw out lots of stuff, like the ancient Sears catalog my dad found at the swap meet. I saved what I could, but I couldn’t save everything. All that I have now is a book by Henry James. I’ve never read it.

Aunt Emma lived in another age, and she loved to talk about Theodore Roosevelt and the return of honor to the presidency. I guess she’d written her master’s thesis on that subject, though I’ve never read that either. I don’t want to think of it, to think of anything before my aunt believed, lived, and breathed a better time. Sometimes even now, when I’m tired, when I’ve done nothing all day but stare at a computer and perform an endless series of meaningless tasks, or when I’m ready to be home but only halfway through my hour-long commute, I wish that I could have lived there, in Aunt Emma’s time, in her 1902.

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