Aunt Cora

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

AUNT CORA

My Great Aunt Cora had not crossed my mind for some time. Then last week I ran across a book she gave to me when I was maybe 9 or 10.

While I’ve always appreciated the gift, I’ve also always wondered what possessed her to give a child Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

I don’t know whether I looked like a melancholy kid or whether she just wanted to pass on a book that had meant a lot to her. Since I was a fairly happy youngster, I assume it was the latter.

Now I didn’t know Aunt Cora well at all. On my family’s annual visits to Arkansas to spend time with my maternal grandparents, we’d all pile in the car and drive around Fayetteville to visit my great aunts and uncles (who were all Kansans by birth but had mysteriously migrated to Arkansas.)

Aunt Cora was a retired teacher and she could still throw a look, so my brother and I did what was expected of us – we sat quietly on uncomfortable furniture for 45 minutes while the adults talked about people we didn’t know.

After several years of these annual visits, my brother and I were surprised when one day Aunt Cora brought out a basket of toys for us to play with. The next year, she told us that we could each take two toys home with us. I selected tiny plastic animals – a pink elephant, and a squirrel with a retractable tape measure attached to the nut in its mouth.

It was the following year that Aunt Cora said something like, “I want you to have this,” as she handed me “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Her signature was inside the cover and sections of the book had been underlined.

The next time I saw Aunt Cora, she was in a nursing home, and she never recovered from the stroke.

“The Power of Positive Thinking,” published in 1952, was my first introduction to the power of thought, a topic that continues to fascinate me, and so I’ve always been grateful for the gift.

Last week as I looked over passages that Aunt Cora had underlined in the book, I pondered her early life in Sheridan County, Kansas. I checked family records and did the math. Cora was 15 when her (and my grandfather’s) mother died in 1907. She was the second-eldest child and the eldest girl.

Two months after Cora’s mother passed away, her 3-month-old brother died. After the mother’s death, some of the kids were taken in by other families. I’ve heard that it was largely because of Cora’s efforts that the siblings stayed connected and that they later got into the normal school, now Fort Hays State University, and became teachers.

She taught school, was married at age 50, and became a widow less than four years later. Cora was the family matriarch and could be rather demanding. Perhaps that strong personality came from taking charge of her siblings at age 15.

While I’ll never know most of Aunt Cora’s stories, memories of her are refreshed each time I see the book. The passages she underlined make me curious about her vulnerable side.

With family in mind, I also remembered a gift from my maternal grandmother, Cora’s sister-in-law. When I was 16, Grandma gave me a ring that her father had given to her on her 16th birthday. The stone was found along the Arkansas River near Kinsley. Grandma liked to call it a Kansas diamond. I believe the stone is a variety of chalcedony.

Grandma told me that the family dog got hold of her ring once. “We had to tie up the dog until we got it back,” she said.

Because this ring carries my grandmother’s history, it means a lot to me.

During this season of giving, I’ve been thinking about these two items: the ring and the book from Aunt Cora.

We’re not always able to put deep personal meaning into everything we wrap, but maybe this year, it would be fun to select one person and give him or her an item that we treasure, and to share the significance of the object with the recipient.

These gifts from the heart are the ones that are cherished.

Copyright 2010 ~ Cheryl Unruh