After a recent conversation with a young man concerning having children in the home, it dawned on me why Aunt Doris, Aunt Annie, Aunt Sis, Aunt Dolores, and Aunt Adriane treasured the company of the McKay Street Kernen girls. They had no daughters of their own, so they borrowed us.
In Aunt Doris’s house, there were rough-and-tumble boys and cousin Pete was the ball player running down the driveway for another game at Aunt Frances’s address.
Aunt Sis had no children and neither did Aunt Dolores, Aunt Adriane, and Uncle Frank, or Aunt Annie and Uncle Clarence. That gave us young ladies who spent summer evenings and weekends in their homes, double learning of what we had been taught at home. Our social graces matched our southern accents and we were privileged to grow up in a respected family setting.
When we spent time with the Aunts there were cooking and sewing sessions and we learned to measure a cup of flour with as much a careful eye as when we did “fancy work” with an embroidery hoop. Unlike the boys in the backyard and neighborhood, we did not “whoop and holler” but instead learned to speak softly and proudly carry a book on the top of our head while walking with poise and charming character from one side of the room to the other.
We learned that lye soap could be made on a back porch and you could hear the roar of the ocean in a large conk seashell. We took for granted that all of us had superpowers because the mentors we admired showed us how to walk into the future with clean attire and hear a calling we needed to embrace. The rest is our history.
I hope our children will continue the learning and mentoring process that we McKay Street girls found to be of great value in facing whatever life in small measures and large decisions, placed on our paths. In any case, it never hurts to walk with a book on your head or in your hand and remember what a faraway ocean sounds like when you hear a cardinal chirping in an early morning.