Aunt Lois

It's complex, in that Aunt Lois lived her own life but included us in it from time to time.

She lived in Europe, Mexico, and Venezuela, working as an academic, and wrote a book about the Mexican revolution. I saw it on my parent's bookshelf when I was a kid. The idea that someone could write something and have that writing be collected in one place with one's name on the front seemed grand to me.

At special occasion/family gatherings, Lois would tell stories about being in Paris and Brussels right after WWII, of watching in D.C. as FDR's cortege passed down Pennsylvania Ave., of meeting Diego Rivera in Mexico City. Richard Neutra, the architect who Lois had booked for one of the many  conferences she arranged, wouldn't go onstage unless there was vodka in the water pitcher on the dais. Stories like that.

She retired in 1988 and moved to Palm Desert. By that time she was married to Richard. They traveled a lot, liked to take cruises and went every year to Cambridge--or was it Oxford--as part of an annual conference she'd started when she'd been the chairman of the social science division of UCLA Extension. Richard died in 2003.

Lois lives alone now in the big house on the golf course in Palm Desert that Richard and she bought to live in together. It's despicably hot in the desert in the summer and most of the people who live in the little community go to their primary homes in far more hospitable climates. Lois has a nice next door neighbor named Jerry, but Jerry has another home in LA and is next door to Lois infrequently, especially in the summer.

About ten years ago I bought Lois a small hand-held Sony tape recorder, hoping she'd talk her memoirs into the machine. "You don't have to write them, just talk," I said. "We'll get somebody to type up the transcription and go from there." She's never done it, though she mentions the project almost every time I talk to her.

We're leaving for Palm Desert today, hoping to persuade Aunt Lois to get out of the desert and move up here to San Francisco for the summer. I hope she comes with us and that she remembers to bring her stories with her.

(On the road: Next Post June 4th)