A Napkin Holder, A Sports-Fan Dog and People Who Still Call Me Georgie

I know I don't get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It's a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe

That's the opening of Jimmy Buffett's One Particular Harbour, one of my all-time favorites. I was driving home from my Aunt Dorothy's late last Sunday, when the familiar thump-thump-thump, which sounds kind of like the sound of waves lapping against the bow of a boat, rolled out of the speakers.

As I drove, I'd been thinking about how much I enjoy being at my Aunt Dorothy's and how, for as long as I can remember, her home's been the center of the energy that drives our extended (WAY extended) family and a comfortable refuge from the storms of whatever age I happened to be. Hearing Jimmy Buffett sing, I realized that Aunt Dorothy's home, her kitchen table more specifically, has been my own 'particular harbour' for the last 50+ years.

Daughter #2 has become obsessed with my Aunt Dorothy, partly because she's as close to a grandmother from my side of the family as daughter #2's known and partly because she's told daughter #2 that she'll spank me if I'm mean to her. Both of us -- non-stop talkers, randomly energetic, always a friend and . . . hardheaded and a tendency toward bossiness -- are very much like Aunt Dorothy. Our drive was the return trip from a weekend that we'd spent visiting with her (in Southeast Texas, near the coast).

I've always gravitated to Aunt Dorothy's, even more than my own parents' house, and most of the time has been around her kitchen table. Aunt Dorothy has a front door, but I think the hinges would've frozen long ago if she didn't use it to check the mail every day. Anybody who's ever visited Aunt Dorothy goes through her always-open garage door and into her always-unlocked kitchen door, rarely knocking, and sits right there at the kitchen table.

I never realized one of the keys to the comfort of that kitchen table until last weekend. Aunt Dorothy served boiled crawfish before daughter #2 and I left town. When I needed a napkin after I'd used about half a roll of paper towels, I reached up to the same napkin holder -- if you're a boomer, you've seen them: wooden box, mounted on the wall, red rooster prancing on the front -- that's been there for my entire life. There's real comfort in that kind of consistency.

Aunt Dorothy's house is on a well-traveled street, once the main street for her small town, two blocks from the shopping area that included the drug store, where we always went for cough syrup (never remember getting a prescription from the doctor); Dryden's, where we bought most of my clothes (I think we had a charge account there); Spencer's, where the ladies shopped (or maybe just window-shopped); a store that carried toys (my favorite); and maybe 4-5 other stores. The Catholic Church -- Aunt Dorothy's church -- still anchors the other end of the main street.

Aunt Dorothy's house is unique because, like Aunt Dorothy, it seems bigger than life. My Uncle Emmett built it himself in the '50s and even though it's only about 1,600 square feet, it seemed huge when I was growing up. Even as an adult, her home, with all its 'extraterritorial jurisdiction,' still seems huge.

Across the street -- from her main entrance through the garage -- is her parking lot, a requisite for the traffic of friends, kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and the rest of us who flow non-stop through her house. The parking lot was a small store and apartments, I believe owned by Uncle Emmett's family. The building was gone decades ago, and the slab and shell parking area has been shared by Aunt Dorothy and the former-grocery-store-now-church that's catty-cornered from her house.

Across the street on the side of the house, which is actually the nearly unused front of the house, is a grassy, pecan-treed block, never built-on, and the family's super-size playground, for as long as I can remember. The now-nearly vacant downtown is on the other side of this block. A gazebo sits on the property now; and, in a decades-long tradition of knowing everything that goes on in her town, through the kitchen window above the sink, Aunt Dorothy (with some help from the rest of us) stayed up-to-date on the progress of last weekend's wedding at the gazebo.

Aunt Dorothy's house is actually one of two houses on the double lot. The second house, a smaller post-World War II pier-and-beam house, is where she, Uncle Emmett and their three kids lived before building her current home. Her grandson and his family live in the older house now. Storms and age have taken their toll, but at one time, the two lots had -- my guess -- six large, very generous pecan trees.

Just as an aside, her grandson has a black Labrador retriever. From his house, he can send the dog to Aunt Dorothy's, then call to ask for the sports page of the newspaper. About that time, the dog scratches on the door, Aunt Dorothy hands it the sports page, and it obediently returns home.

So Aunt Dorothy's house -- actually two houses, a double lot, a parking lot, a park-like block, an old downtown, a steady stream of friends and family, a sports-fan dog and people who still call me Georgie -- may actually be larger than life. It remains one of my favorite places and like Jimmy Buffett describes, my 'particular harbor.'

Aunt Dorothy? She'll be 85 next month, and she's thinking about retiring from her job. She has three children, seven grandchildren and 13 grandkids. Just a few years ago, the local chamber of commerce voted her 'Mother of the Year.' She survived breast cancer a couple of years ago, facing it with a relaxed 'I'm 82, I've lived a long time' attitude. An embarrassing amount of energy, and she loves the beach, where she and her family celebrate Easter and her birthday every year. Always a finalist in the annual croquet tournament.

Her multi-generational offer to me, my other cousins and probably a hundred other teenage friends of her sons and grandsons: 'If you're going to smoke, drink or gamble, you come over here. I don't want you on the streets getting into trouble.'

Her advice when I complained of daughter #1's teenage behavior: 'Georgie, she's not on drugs, in jail or pregnant. What more do you want?'

But, most importantly, Aunt Dorothy has me being a lot nicer to daughter #2. I'm way too old to be spanked . . . but she's not too old to do it.

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within