The dark almost undistinguishable photograph dated 1915 showed Aunt Lizzie posing next to her husband Charles' chair. On his lap sat their one-year-old first born son named Lester. The photographer's camera captured her austerely dressed in a long dark skirt with a white middy blouse. Her dark hair was simply styled against her sensitive and pretty face. She looked like a schoolmarm at the turn of the twentieth century. (She was born at the end of the nineteenth century).

However, this image is not how I perceived her. As you read my essay, what conclusions do you come to?

Aunt Lizzie was Mom's oldest sister. She was called Liz by her siblings and Aunt Lizzie and Aunt Betty by her nieces and nephews. The facets of her life were as varied, too!

Uncle Charley, a Sicilian immigrant, was nineteen and Aunt Lizzie was sixteen when they eloped to New York City to be married. Grandpa Nicholas Fisher, Aunt Lizzie's stepfather, hated Uncle Charley for this. I think the dislike was not necessarily because he was a "foreigner", a Sicilian, but because he was not a "Hollander" or "Deutchmann"!

Aunt Lizzie only had a second grade elementary school education. Yet she was one of the best educated women I knew. Her thirst for knowledge couldn't be quenched. It was manifested through her sons who chose careers in education. Les taught English at Lodi High School for almost fifty years. Ted was the principal of a progressive grammar school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

My reading assignments from my grammar school through high school years became Aunt Lizzie's reading assignments, too! She would read along with me. Subsequently, lively discussions followed meals about the interpretations of these literary works. At the rate she was going, she could have received her high school diploma along with me!

Uncle Charley died when Aunt Lizzie was fifty. An unusual living arrangement, subsequently, evolved. She lived six months in Grand Rapids with Ted, MaryLou and their five children. The remaining six months were spent in New Jersey with Les, Lois and Leslie Ted.

During her New Jersey stay, she would spend weekends with Mom, Dottie and me. She seemed more like a grandmother than an aunt, even though she was only thirteen years older than Mom.

Aunt Lizzie was also bilingual, speaking English and Italian (Sicilian). She went into her marriage with Uncle Charley knowing only one language. In order to converse with her mother-in-law, with whom they lived, she had to learn Sicilian.

They story I loved most was when she came to visit us, she would stop at the Sicilian bakery around the corner from where we lived, to by Italian bread for our dinner. The owner of the bakery was born in Sicily. He spoke a "fractured" English. Aunt Lizzie found it easier to speak to him in Sicilian. She went there weekly for years. However, one day she and Mom went shopping, stopping at the bakery on the way home. Each gave Mr. Morales her order. Aunt Lizzie repeated hers in Sicilian, Mom in English. As he was bagging their purchases, he commented that he didn't know that they knew each other. To which they exclaimed, 'We are sisters!' He found that quite impossible. With his voice escalating, he said to Mom 'She is Sicilian, you are not!' They giggled and insisted that they were, indeed, sisters! Mr. Morales went on to explain that the Sicilian dialect Aunt Lizzie was using was flawlessly and perfectly spoken like someone born on Sicilian soil. I often thought that if Aunt Lizzie had a formal education and lived in a different time, she would have been a translator, linguist or a language teacher.

Mom made lasagna and manicotti with her own dough, and zucchini parmesan long before zucchini became a popular vegetable of middle-class America. Her veal parmesan melted in your mouth, as well as, her braciole with pignoli nuts. For years I thought Mom learned her Sicilian cuisine from our Sicilian neighbors. Garfield was known then as 'Little Sicily'. Now I realize that she learned her Italian cooking skills from Aunt Lizzie.

I remember sitting in our large country type kitchen (even though it was a third floor apartment) at the kitchen table drinking coffee sweetened with many teaspoonfuls of sugar (Children were allowed to do so then). Mom and Aunt Lizzie would make an evening snack of fried dough (which was left over from Mom's weekly bread baking) sprinkled with powdered sugar. As children Dottie and I called them "moostedees". We had a coal stove in our kitchen that was used for heat, but Mom took advantage of its surrounding heat to raise her dough. We took advantage of its inside flames to roast hot dogs, hamburgers, marshmallows, and cheese sandwiches, just like people today use their backyard grills.

Our large kitchen was a source of comfort to Mom and Aunt Lizzie, not only because of the cooking, fellowship, and favorite foods, but for the painted cane rocker that stood near the window. It was Grandma Fisher's rocker. As Aunt Lizzie rocked, she would tell us stories of their childhood. It was like Grandma was still with us. Children feel that aunts, uncles, grandparents and parents will always be with us, so when they listen to the stories they don't listen intently enough to memorize. I wished I had.

It seemed that Mom painted the kitchen every year (It probably was every two years). As the walls were painted, so were the kitchen table and chairs. Gram's rocker did not escape the brush! When we moved to Clifton, the rocker went into the cellar storage area. Our new kitchen wasn't large enough to accommodate the rocker. My plan was to make a summer project of removing the years and years of paint and bring it to its natural wood. I never did. I left the rocker behind when I moved to Pittsburgh. Thirty-five years on a damp dirt cellar floor was not kind to it. I guess it's better that I retain its nostalgic memories.

Auntie Ann was Daddy's sister and her husband Freddie, was Mom and Aunt Lizzie's brother. Subsequently, when Uncle Freddie died, Auntie would also visit us more often and sleep over, too.

Sometimes Auntie and Aunt Lizzie's visits would coincide. It is a wonderful memory to recall, watching Mom cook, and the aunts bake and help, all of them preparing recipes lovingly. It was even more fun to eat whatever delicious delights they concocted. I read recently that cooking is a personal statement of caring. It involves putting something of yourself into what you do. Food can nurture the soul and body, food that was enriched by sharing something of yourself with others. Dottie and I were certainly nurtured everyday!

Aunt Lizzie and I shared the first name, Elizabeth, yet we were different. She was frugal, and I am reported to be a spendthrift! Aunt Lizzie would be proud of my shopping sprees at the thrift and consignment shops. As I look back now, I realize that Aunt Lizzie was on a limited income. She would often buy us trinkets, especially pins. They were usually whimsical. I still have one that she gave me over fifty years ago, a goldtone bunny with one straight ear and one floppy ear, and a faux ruby in the tummy. Every Easter season when I wear it, I remember Aunt Lizzie.

Another memory I have is one when I would sleep over at the apartment in Hackensack, which Aunt Lizzie shared with Les, Lois and "Pip". I shared her dark mahogany double bed during those visits. In the morning Aunt Lizzie would remind me about my fitful sleeping habits, and how I kicked and punched her. I felt terrible that I was hitting an elderly person like that! As I reflect about my age and hers, I realize that I am older at the time of this writing that she was at the time of my "brutality".

Mom and Aunt Lizzie would also spend a lot of their energies cleaning. They would wax floors, wash windows and curtains, iron, and cook. Aunt Lizzie felt that she had to earn her "keep". She was a big help to our family.

Mom had had several serious operations, and a traumatic time when Daddy died at the age of thirty-eight. Aunt Lizzie and Auntie were there to take care of Dottie and me and comfort Mom in a motherly way. As Dottie and I grew older spending more time with our friends, Mom and Aunt Lizzie bonded even more as they sewed, knitted and crocheted together. As their needles clicked, they reminisced about their childhood, parents, husbands, children and Aunt Lizzie's grandchildren. Unfortunately, Aunt Lizzie didn't live long enough to see Leslie Ted a.k.a. "Pip", her youngest grandchild, graduate from the Naval Academy at Annapolis and receive his diploma from President Ronald Reagan. What an honor!

I read recently that children absorb everything and store it away. Later on it registers at a time in their lives when it will be needed. This is so apropos. Changes in our society and the lowering of values provided a need for me to share and introduce a beloved aunt to her great-nieces and great-nephews, and also to remind them how important families are.

We are judged in life by what we teach and learn. The gifts we exchange consciously and unconsciously. One of life's lessons is how to let go and hold on at the same time.

This goes for memories, too!

Aunt Lizzie, you were a very special lady!