I mentioned yesterday that my aunt died on Saturday, the last of the four sisters who constituted their generation of my mother’s family. At this point, I think that all of their children are in our sixties, and one of my cousins has grandchildren as we do. My mother’s generation, and my grandfather and grandmother, had a vaguely mythic status in Margaret’s and my experience of the family. Grandfather Emerson was an artist and academic, Curator of Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery and founding Master of dAvenport College at Yale, who died unduly young; grandmother Isabelle (‘Gran’ to us) was a gifted painter and prominent arts organiser in her communities. Their engravings and paintings distinguish our walls. They socialised with various literati and artists of their time, from Scott and Zelda to Thornton Wilder and Archibald MacLeish, among others. The sisters grew up in that setting, attended the Foote School in New Haven, went to Radcliffe College, and grew into strong identities of their own, mostly arts-oriented. I was particularly close to Aunt Harriet as a toddler, when my mother couldn’t handle both carrying my sister in pregnancy and dealing with her one-year-old son. I stayed at Gran’s home in New Haven (and went to the Nantucket house) with Aunt Harri, and she cared for me with patience, grace, affection, and loving generosity at a time before she married and with my uncle Bob started a family of their own. Aunt Harri would teach me the names of the birds on the walls of Gran’s house as she carried me upstairs and down, would read to me, take me to the beach, and offer me a mother’s love in circumstances when my own mother could not. I wish I remembered those days more vividly, but I know that Harriet’s care meant the world to a kid who had (‘has’) a proclivity to loneliness.
So, the last couple of days have been tinged with grief-grey. At the same time, we learned yesterday morning that the sellers of the house on which we made an offer, for which we dared not presume we’d be successful (there had already been another offer for it), had accepted our offer, and that if we navigated all the hoops of becoming British householders, the house would be — will be, heaven permitting — ours. We feel this especially powerfully since we haven’t really chosen a home in all our years together; most of the time we’ve been in assigned faculty or clerical housing, or in a pro-tempore flat (often chosen at a distance) to tide us over to the next post. Should all the pieces come together, we’ll be living near Oxford, near bus routes into Oxford and out toward London, near a large grocery and a lovely, welcoming park, near friends, in an area with which we’re already acquainted.
Two big emotional tides, with me drawn in both directions at once. Woe, and exultation; grief and joy.