My Aunt Sylvia
I think my Aunt Sylvia would have been some sort of artist if she’d been born later or into a different family.
On Friday nights, when there was nothing else to do, she used to tell me, “Go get the keys from your daddy. Let’s see the Freak Show.”
She meant that we would cruise Westheimer near Montrose, where all the prostitutes, drag queens, and pretty young boys walked the street and sometimes climbed into the other cars.
Afterwards, we always went to Baskin Robbins, where she would watch me eat a banana split with the most eclectic combination of flavors my thirteen-year-old mind could contrive.
This was after her mother had died. After she’d babysat and cleaned up after her mother, who was busy tearing out of life in a hilariously awful rampage of senility, dementia, and incontinence.
This was before I’d become a real teenager and fought my way away, out of our house.
This was the quiet time for her, when she ventured out with me to see marvelous things. She carefully monitored my growth into someone who would go on to see more, later, without her.
