Aunt Nell's Hidden Past Published
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“HOLY COW!” Dasha said aloud after reading the first seven entries of Aunt Nell’s diary. She had had a vague memory of knowing that her mother Stacy and Aunt Nell had lived in Berlin during the Cold War, but all these details were a surprise.
Already in the third decade of the 21st century that era seemed so remote to her, and not one well covered in her own history classes. Nor had she been asked to cover any of it in the history learning guides she’d been writing. But here she had rare primary source material right in her hands.
It was fascinating, too, to be pulled into Nell’s life as a young woman. In Dasha’s memory, Nell had never been younger than 45. Here she was experiencing her aunt as an impressionable teenager in the midst of one of the most historic periods of modern times, and living right in the middle of it. Holy mysteries, Batman, what else did she and her brother not know about their only living relative?
NELL STRUGGLED to put on a sweater. The morning air was cool, and combined with a protein rich breakfast, she had the energy to take a walk, if she could just find the arm hole of this dang angora.
“Good morning Miz Nell. And how are we today?” said the stocky CNA as he walked into her room, glad to see her up for a change.
“Help me with this sweater,” Nell instructed, “and then WE will be fine. WE are going to the PX.”
Oscar smiled, his hazel eyes seeming amused, his dozen or more lengths of tight ash brown braids — some with interwoven strands of bright purple — in need of a cut in Nell’s opinion.
“What’s a PX?” he asked, never having been anywhere near a military base, much less a post exchange.
“You know perfectly well what it is, Harris,” she called Oscar the name of the person he reminded her of that day, her first boyfriend in Berlin. How Harris got away with his hair so long, she couldn’t fathom. It was against regulations for an Army first lieutenant.
Oscar smiled, and played along. “I’ve forgotten where it is,” he said. “You’ll have to show me. Would you like a hat today? Want your walker?”
Shaking her head no, and looking up at him with a flirty glance, Nell took a shaky step forward. He held out an arm for her to steady herself, and let her set the pace of their walk, slow but determined.
Down the corridor they went, Nell asking if Bill and Dad were in their office yet after the morning briefing they always gave the general. “I don’t think so,” Oscar said, still clueless as to what she was talking about. But he had been trained to join her reality, and, as a patient and kind young man, he found it delightful to do so.
“Now Harris, you don’t have to work late today, do you? You promised we would go see The Music Man tonight.”
Since Oscar was a fan of movie musicals, he knew the reference. It was actually one of his favorites, and he had the urge to break into Seventy-Six Trombones right then, but realized that in Nell’s world, he hadn’t seen the movie yet. “As far as I know, Miz Nell, I’ll be off duty right on time,” he reassured her, knowing she wouldn’t remember by 5 PM when his shift ended that they had had this discussion.
He punched in the code to open the memory care ward door without setting off the alarm, and allowed her to precede him into the courtyard. She seemed to know right where she was going, heading for the door to the dining hall on the other side of the well landscaped square.
They continued their stroll, Oscar following her lead, until Nell had forgotten where she had intended to go. “I have to get back to the office, now, Harris,” Nell announced. “We better take the short cut.”
“Good idea,” Oscar said, uncertain what she might have in mind. When she headed for the elevator to the basement’s laundry facility, he redirected her attention. “I found a new short cut the other day. Shall we try it?”
She nodded, seeming to lose the clarity of purpose she’d had just a moment ago. Like many memory care patients he had tended, Nell would suddenly slip into a daze and become as dependent as a child on another’s ability to take control.
Oscar walked her back to her suite, and settled her into her comfortable reverie chair, spreading a navy and white Sherpa blanket over her. “Thank you, Harris,” she said, and closed her eyes to let the memory of her Army beau take her back to 1960s Berlin.
