My Mom loved to bake for the holidays.  She was famous for her cookies and she made tons of cookies.  She placed them in the freezer and threatened our lives if we touched them.  There were some that we left alone particularly, the Bourbon balls, that she would always get a bit tipsy while she was baking and the oatmeal cookies (not one of my favorites).  When she made the chocolate chips “all bets” and “the gloves” came off.  My brothers and I would have a “throw down” to eat the chocolate chip cookies. 

That reminds me of my Great Aunt Minnie.   Her given name was Wilhelmina Minerva Harris.  She was my Grandmother’s sister.  To me she was the neatest lady as she always kept candy (a Whitman’s Sampler) and apple juice in her room.  She and I would watch “stories” in the afternoon, eat the candies and drink apple juice.  She is the person that taught me about the Days of Our Lives and all about Another World.  True, we did watch those soaps along with The Doctors and Guiding Light, but the lives and worlds she shared were magical to a little girl. 

She told me about her suitors of which there were many.  She opened the old box and showed me the engagement rings which she accepted, but never married any of them.  I guess in her day you didn’t return the rings!  She told me about the streetcars she rode in Baltimore to work and let me snuggle in her fur coat as I lounged on her bed. 

Aunt Minnie was very hard of hearing and would often answer the phone without her hearing aid in.  You would scream into the phone and she would never understand what you were saying.  She called to have her groceries delivered, called the butcher to bring her meats, and terrorized the paper boy.  That poor paper boy!  All he ever wanted was his weekly payment of $2 bucks for a week’s worth of newspapers.  Every week Grandma and Aunts Minnie and Rose raked him over the coals and accused him of cheating them out of their hard earned money.  I am not sure if they forgot (doubtful as they were all sharp as tacks) or were just stingy and trying to keep their money.  That paper boy must have needed the cash badly as I would have never brought that paper to their door EVER! 

But I digress, back to Aunt Min.  She was a baker.  Her specialty was chocolate cakes with chocolate icing, chocolate chip cookies and bread.  Aunt Min’s cookies were epic.  She baked them so they were ALWAYS chewy.  You could leave them on the table for a month, but they were never hard.  She took that trick to her grave with her as she never shared it.  She always made sure when I visited that there was a chocolate cake for me, too.  She made me the woman I am today.

When Aunt Min was about 95 she fell off her chair while clipping her toe nails and broke her hip.  The doctor told her she would never walk without her walker again.  She tossed the walker out the window (she was on the 2nd floor) and never used it again while the doctor stared in shock!  She didn’t need it and got around just fine from that point forward. 

She outlived both her sisters, my Grandma who passed away in her late 80’s from an aneurysm and Aunt Rose, who died from a stroke at 98.  Aunt Min lived to be 102 years old and passed away peacefully in her sleep.  She truly had a life well lived.  She was also a very good Catholic.  She would sit in her chair by the window and say her Rosary every day.  I knew she prayed, too.  She told me often that she prayed for my family and her friends. 

Rest in peace, Aunt Min, you pistol! 

The picture above is from a necklace I made for Karla of Sugar Bear Designs.  She sent me some vintage wallpaper pieces and I sent her that necklace in exchange.  The beads are some very old vintage red glass beads.  They are a lovely color.