A tribute to fairy Godmothers

My hunch is that most kids prefer younger adults. As a child, I did not. The perceptions I drew from elders influenced me.  I remember older neighbors and how I made it a point to befriend them. Such as when I watched Mrs. Flory watering her lawn how I learned about the intrinsic value of nature. Sitting in the Irving’s living room snuggled into a big chair and being served liverwurst for the first time while being told about far-away lands.  Sipping lemonade with Mrs. Stokes while she fanned herself southern style I listened on why good manners were to be cultivated. Inside the Bogue’s dining room I got my first introduction to Jazz and the Big Bands.  And last there was my godmother, Aurora who lived in a big Victorian house that had all the trappings of another era; the enormous porch, a cast iron stove, the glass kitchen cabinets, a pond in the backyard, and the foot stool I had to step on to get into a high rise poster-bed.

If any woman could be said to embody and to be confined to a 1930’s cinematic era, it would have been her. Although she wasn’t an actress, like the famous contemporaries of the time—Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Dolores Del Rio—she made a number of smart, savvy, sophisticated, moves that poured out of her in the years during my childhood.  She’s as much a part of the 1930's milieu as, say, the glamorous cast of The Women.    

Today I remember her since it would have been her birthday.  But also, like the aforementioned actresses, she personified what was then an era of chic—a time of glamour, attractiveness and magnetic flair.  As a child she came across as gentle and patient, forever a people watcher—forever curious about everything around her she would ask me adult-like questions about my ideas and increased my ability to symbolize, pushing my intellect making me think long after I had given my answer.  And when I gave her responses she asked me for definitions.  In my eyes, no one set the trends and pushed the limits better than she did. She was the quintessential star of my day, and she set the style, the vogue, and the trends in her social circle.  She was dubbed, the brightest, the best dressed, the most elegant, the jewel in the crown.