A MOTHERS DAY POST; A STRONG WILLED WOMAN

I have wanted to post all week long. I missed Alphabe Thursday and Vintage Thursday Thingy. But I am going to do a series of Mother's Day posts to show you the women who influenced me the most. This is my late Auntie Ang. She was married to my mom's only surviving brother Uncle Louie. I will post about him later. He would be 103 on Mother's Day this year! Ah phamily memories....
Auntie Ang taught me how to be a strong woman and a very sharp witted women! She married later in life, in her thirties and wore a navy blue suit. She wore red nail polish and red lipstick and always made most of her own clothes. She was a fashionista before that was popular. She always had a purse and shoes to match her outfit and she wore her hair big and beautiful.
She was a marvelous cook and I have many of her hand written recipes with me to this day. Although my Sweets is a much better cook than I am I use her recipes all the time. She made a red velvet cake that was divine!
My life with my favorite aunt was so much fun. She took me shopping and we always went out to eat. She liked to travel and we spent every weekend going to lots of different places.
Her mother passed away and married my paternal great grandfather! So I always loved when she told me stories about them.
She hated bananas. She told me once when she was a young child a fruit truck overturned near her home and the kids all ran into the street and grabbed as many bananas as they could carry! She said she ate so many of them that they made her sick and until the day she passed away she could not stand the sight of a banana!
She disliked the desert and although her niece Elsa and her husband lived in Tucson she always disliked visiting there. She hated cactus and all the landscaping today they call "zero scaping".  She always said "If I wanted a damned cactus I would move to the desert!" I am just like her. I love flowers and I wish I had the green thumb she and my uncle had when it came to raising roses. They had one of the most magical rose gardens I have ever seen. If I close my eyes I can still smell the sweet scent of roses filling their yard on a hot summer day!
She was a master seamstress and she could crochet too. Once when a high school teacher berated me for being "stupid" and unable to learn the fine art of sewing I went to her house and cried. She said "To heck with that old battleaxe!" Then she promptly helped me design the most magnificent pant suit. It had a peplum styled top and that cute little flounce at the bottom of the hem made me feel so special when I wore it! She helped me sew that outfit and guided my hands every step of the way. She was a very patient woman and had a heart of gold. I wish I still had all those outfits she made me! I never learned to sew myself but that one experience was enough to get me a passing grade because that nun never believed I could have created anything that beautiful by myself.
My aunt was a classy lady. She passed away from breast cancer in 2000 and I will never forget her. She taught me to love a good read although she favored romance novels and I liked the classics just like my uncle Louie. She gave me several pairs of cameo earrings and today I wore a pair and lost one. I am heart sick over it. I had her on my mind all day long and so I decided to start my Mother's Day post with her.
The top photo is 1985 and she is holding my first son Jeremy. He is wearing "Uncles" favorite hat! The second photo is Auntie Ang with me at a phamily reunion in 1970. My mother's cousin had a son who married a Texas cattleman's daughter. They owned a cattle ranch near Westcliff, Colorado and we had just seen their prized  bull who weighed in at over 1,000 lbs. and was estimated to be worth over several hundred thousand dollars! His living quarters and his diet were more impressive than any celebrity and he had lots of the "lady cows" looking to make a match with him! It was a wonderful day and I remember it fondly.
So if she were here with me now I would wish her a beautiful Mother's Day and she would buy me lunch!

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family." Anthony Brandt