My Aunt

One of my favorite pictures is of me and my aunt. I am about three years old in the picture – my hair still in mini-fro form. In the picture we are standing in my kitchen with our family room in the background. I’m wearing a yellow t-shirt and extremely fashionable hot pink shorts with white sandals. My aunt is in jeans, white Keds, and a striped shirt. On our heads are random patterned leggings and shirts, as well as mismatched slippers on our hands. I have the biggest smile on my face and so does my aunt; it is a picture of pure goofiness and joy! 

This image is imprinted in my memory and I can recall this time I spent with my aunt dressing up in silly outfits – I think. Like Kincaid, this memory is partially fact and partially fiction. In her piece, “Biography of a Dress”, she recalls her second birthday in great detail that she clearly could not actually remember on her own. Kincaid uses this image of her in a dress to tell a somewhat True narrative in order to explain and process her relationship with her mother and her experience as a child. She could have told us about her second or third or tenth birthday for all it matters – the point is that she is analyzing her childhood spent with her mother from the perspective of adulthood. 

While I do not actually remember playing with my aunt that exact day, this image and experience speak to my relationship with her as a whole. I was very fortunate that I had a close relationship with my aunt as I grew up (I was her first niece). She and my uncle lived in Chicago for a short period of time, but they decided to move back to Ohio after I was born. I was the flower girl in their wedding and spent quite a bit of time with them as a kid. Throughout middle and high school, they would come to my tennis matches and were still very involved in my life even after having kids of their own. After seeing the whole picture, it is a bit easier to understand how I can “remember” this playdate with my aunt in which we dressed in goofy clothing. I “remember” it because I have so many other great memories of having fun with my aunt that I can imagine what happened that day. This imagined remembrance makes this experience as real to me as if it truly happened. It is a testament to my relationship with my aunt and who she is as a person, so in a way it is true (maybe not True, though).