Dijital Dharma

My Aunt Jule has often been my role model throughout my life. She was always, to me, and independent woman, a traveler, an unapologetic lover of art, pleasure, money and men. She left the family for NYC and stayed away for 20 years. I would visit her frequently and she would show me the sights of the city.

To me she was a princess living in a enigmatic fairyland that is NYC, who had a gorgeous (if small) East Village apartment, a luxurious canopy bed nestled near a working fireplace and drawers and closets filled with shiny pattered dresses, sequined tops, and glittering bobbles. I used to pull out her jewelry (most of it just costume) and examine each sparkling piece, wondering on what occasions she would decorate herself with such extravagance. She once told me she had been to a party with Madonna. She was (and is) exotic-model beautiful. Giant eyes, thick, wavy hair, a body like an amazon (minus the amputated boob, of course). She actually looks strikingly like the bust of Nefertiti.

My aunt, circa 1985

When I was young, she treated me like her daughter – she would buy me wonderful dresses, take me to amazing places, and was always very protective of me. Sometimes I wondered what my life would be like if I were her daughter. Often I wondered what my life would be like if I were actually her. I wanted to be by Aunt Jule when I grew up.

Now, things have changed. She moved back to Pennsylvania and married. I don’t really know if she is happy. I want to ask her. But I’m reluctant to call her.

I don’t talk to her often anymore, mostly because I think we don’t understand each other the way we once did. I used to feel like we were the same person with the same desires in life. And my realization that we have grown in different directions breaks my heart – and often makes me hesitate to call.

Over the last few years when I’ve spoken with her, I feel as if she is not proud of my accomplishments in life and somehow expects me to have and wants me to accomplish more – and that my ideas of happiness are not her own. I never end a conversation with her feeling good about my life. I feel embarrassed, incomplete. And maybe it is not right to blame her for it, maybe she is just trying to be honest – but it hurts.

On my mobile to-do list, I have “Call Jule” listed as a task. I keep moving it every week and avoiding the call. But I don’t delete it. I want to call her and talk to her again like I used to. Like when we went to Italy together, just she and I, when I was 16… I learned so much about who she was and what she wanted from her life. In turn, I told her all of my secrets - a major expression of love and trust at 16. She was like the elder sister I never had, my best friend, my mentor.

She has always been critical of me, though. I will also never forget the time she told me that I was, well, pudgy. She is in awesome shape – always has been.  Sometimes I am nervous to go home to see her – in my mind I can feel her judging my body. She may not be in her own mind, but I am ashamed to see her if I’m not in perfect condition.

So maybe I’m not like my Aunt Jule – like I’ve always thought I was. And then I come to think – Maybe it was my Aunt Amelia who I was REALLY like… She was always a recluse, reading millions of books and writing little notes and philosophies to herself. She surrounded herself with sailors and professors. She only played with boys growing up and liked to beat up the girls. She was an exhibitionist and talked about sex at the dinner table with glee and humour. When she babysat my brother and I, she had a puppet named Boris (a creepy thing, with a paper-mache head, a long nose and a hairy, whiskery chin) whom she would make fart all the time to make us laugh. She was probably a liberal. She is the only member of my Dad’s family (besides my dad, but he is a man so its different in my families eyes) to openly live with a lover while unmarried. I believe she was (inwardly) jealous of my Aunt Jule. She liked to drink and, (as she once confessed a few years ago during the Fourth of July) smoke pot. She said to me, “Man I could really go for some marijuana right now.” Ha! I thought she was the most insane, most hilarious 50 year old ever. It pains me to think that I never got to share these impressions with her before she died.

In any case, I feel that I finally need to make that call to my aunt. She is my goddess, and it is time for my confession.