O-H-I-O

  I don’t remember ever not knowing who my Aunt Jackie was; even though she lived in Ohio. She was always at the big events and would stop through from time to time. It was always special to see her but she was never a stranger. At a very young age, before I could even grasp she and my mother were siblings, I understood they had a special relationship. I could see my mother trusted her. She looked like my mother. They talked alike. That made her okay with me from as early as I can remember. I thought, I can hang with her and be just fine.

  Usually, and always in the summertime, my Auntie brought along with her what at my age was a dynamite package: older cousins! I’ve had so much fun with them and have stories too but as I think back, it was them being cool by association in the very beginning at least. They and my uncle did make her visits special. Yet her alone,  virtually an extension of my mother, always made me feel generally comfortable in any setting. In fact, I was the youngest of our little gang of four cousins and based on my point of view, I was her favorite. Sure, we all thought we were her favorite but I like my version better.

  Being one of my chosen few, spending a summer in another state at her home was no different than staying next door to my own. I was so excited to go, I don’t even remember the flight there. I only remember the trip back, signaling the end of a great summer of ‘84. This was the summer during the Olympics in LA when I first saw Michael Jordan play basketball. It was when my cousin taught me how to ride a bike. My allowance went from 5 to 10 dollars a week, which at the time I thought was so scandalous. I remember fearing my mother would find out and tell my auntie to go back to giving us 5 like back home. Stores and even the Cedar Point Amusement Park was within bike riding distance. I shared a bunk bed with my (big brother) cousin, just like in the old TV show Diff’rent Strokes. Anything I would miss at home was more than compensated for here. Auntie seemed to know everything I needed to make me hate that it would all end eventually.

  While it seemed no effort was spared to make me (and my sister) feel at home, my Auntie’s greatest gift to me was free reign of their basement. See, I’ve been building toys and gadgets out of tape and cardboard and anything else I could find for as long as I can remember. My room was always a mess and almost always from hobby building materials. My room was my workshop. Not having my workshop wasn’t gonna stop me from building things, for sure. I would be sharing a room but I’d figure something out. After all, clearly my Auntie knew my hobbies so I wasn’t worried about the what, so much as I was worried about the how. This wasn’t our first time in Ohio so nothing here was new to me. I already claimed which corner of the bedroom would be my workstation. My equivalent to winning a billion dollar lottery was when she said it was okay for me to play in their basement whenever I wanted. I wasn’t a destructive child in the sense that she had to worry about me breaking anything. She knew I had a little problem with leaving snippets of cardboard, tape and plastics all around where I’m hobbying but nothing a vacuum couldn’t handle in a pinch. She didn’t have the luxury at the time of knowing how far off into my own world I can get and allowing near unrestricted access to that basement, with twice the allowance to buy supplies as well as enough material already laying around; I was now a mad scientist in his own secret hidden laboratory.

  That basement was my first taste of what would become what my garage is today and hopefully a full on science lab. I even felt like everyone else was trespassing if they came down there. Still no different from home, she would poke her head in to check on me from time to time like ma and let me know when I had to take a break to eat or just come up for air. During a good enough rain water sometimes made its way down there. My first time seeing this was after a long rainstorm one evening that left the basement flooded. Nearly a foot or so. I remember my Uncle and Auntie being upset about it but it happens from time to time so they weren’t devastated in the least. I’d never even heard of such a thing, what with us not even having a basement at home. When I made my way down the stairs to see this terrible flooding thing everyone was talking about and…there was an Disney old cartoon where Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s very wealthy uncle would go down to his huge vault full of good coins and take a swim through all his gold and riches. I basically became Scrooge McDuck that very moment. I looked around at everyone else, thinking how can all of you be so ungrateful? The greatest thing in the world happened in a basement in Midwest America and these people are complaining about it. While she’s thinking about water damage, I’m thinking about what type of plastics I need to build a boat. Auntie pleeeease let me play in that indoor pool. Of course she did, and I couldn’t build a boat fast enough before it all drained. And I don’t remember that ever happening again that whole summer but in Ohio, there seemed to be something new and exciting to do just about every we went.

  The one ”tragedy” I experienced was one that all involved will surely never forget. 1984 was during the peak of the TV show Knight Rider. Like most kids like me in the 80s, I thought I was a bigger fan than the next guy if not the biggest. If you slapped a Knight Rider sticker on a tutu, I was your ballerina for that day. It was that bad. Enter the best Knight Rider talking car toy a 9 year old boy could ever dream of. My dear mother thought it would be a terrific idea to buy me one and ship it to Ohio. She was right, that WAS a terrific idea. She also thought it would be a terrific idea to tell me and my Auntie about it. That was a terrible idea. Telling a 9 year old boy that the greatest thing ever would be here in just a day or so was cruel and unjust. You know Auntie did her best but by day two the entire household was consoling me. The mother I so loved had become my mortal enemy. How could she be so cruel as to not drive that thing personally all the way from South Carolina to Ohio that very second she was given the receipt for it? She knew I would absolutely die if it didn’t arrive the very next day. When the big sister you spend your days annoying feels so sorry for you that she’s willing to hunt down the mailman…well, you get the picture.

  In hindsight, I came back home a little more grown up. I left home for an extended time. I discovered Michael Jordan, shared my first bunk bed with my big cousin who showed me how to make G.I. Joe action figures break the laws of physics with unrealistic kung fu moves. My other cousin taught me how to ride a bike. I saw a new side of my sister showing me she loved me when I thought it was a sister’s job to hate her little brother. I learned money is scalable. My mother, after it was all said and done, showed her love reaches me no matter where I am. And for a kid who preferred to stay alone in his room tinkering, my Auntie managed to get me to travel hundreds of miles away and give me some of my best young memories. There is nothing I would ever change about that summer; except for the Knight Rider thing (thanks, ma😘). Thanks Auntie, for showing me that “Auntie” is much more than just a title. It was a clinic in how auntiedom is done right.