I shiver to think about what my life as a child might have been like if not for the love of my Aunt Gina. It wasn't my parents who taught me to ride a bike, or how to make popcorn. It wasn't my mom, or my dad or stepmom who took me to the movies, or to the video arcade. It was my Aunt Gina who did all of those things.
I was about four when she taught me how to ride my first bike. My grandparents had purchased it at an auction and given it to me for my birthday. It was an old bike with rust spots on the frame, painted red with white writing that I'm sure identified the company who made it. The tires, set over white wheels, seemed wide for their size, and were slick with wear, the tread all but worn away. The bike spent its first several weeks out in my backyard, leaning against the house until Gina was over to babysit. When she saw it just leaning there, she just had to get me on it…and get me riding.
I remember her showing me how to guide the bike with the handlebars as I walked along beside it, and how to put the kickstand in the up position so as to stop tripping over it. The lesson was simple: "Keep pedaling and stay on the sidewalk." She ran along beside me, holding the handlebars with her hands over top of mine as I sat on the seat with my feet on the moving pedals. I wanted so badly to feel the wind in my face like I always did on one of my uncles' motorcycles. Then I got the thrill I'd been waiting for when I realized she'd let go of the bike and I was pedaling like a boy possessed. She was laughing as I took off, shouting out her encouragement as I sped off down the sidewalk.
And then she realized that she'd forgotten to tell me how to stop.
She yelled for me and ran after me, but I was in the moment, and it seemed all hearing had left me. When I finally neared the end of our street, several hundred yards at least, I started to for wonder myself how I would stop. That's when I finally heard her voice behind me, yelling for me to "Pedal backwards!" So I did. The braking mechanism kicked in and the bike skidded to a halt as a very winded 14 year old ran up behind me, laughing as I stood there, straddling the bike, staring wide-eyed behind me at the long black streak I'd left in rubber on the sidewalk. I took it a bit slower on the way back, walking the bike most of the way before jumping back on and getting just enough speed to leave a another streak in front of my house.
Sometime after that my mom and dad split up, and with my mom gone to Arizona, Gina became the primary female figure in my life. I missed my mom terribly, but Gina was always there for me, doing all the things with me that a mom might do, even though she was only ten years my elder. In retrospect, it was like someone had a plan for me that included me getting to spend as much time as I could with my aunt, without me having to lose one or both of my parents to something other than a move to the desert. My dad remarried and suddenly we were a family of six, as my stepmom had two sons from a previous marriage. My stepbrothers' dad had weekend visitation, so they spent every other weekend at his house, leaving my little brother and I with our dad and stepmom.
Then my dad got the brilliant idea to drop my brother and me off at my grandma's house on those weekends. This must have been part of the great plan that someone had for me. As Gina was still a teenager, she obviously lived at grandma's house, and so here we were, spending time with her all weekend long!
Before she could drive we would spend a lot of time in her room, listening to her stereo and burning incense or candles, or sometimes both. In this way I was introduced to the Jackson 5, The Beatles, The Osmonds, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and every pop song to make the top 40 from about 1975 until the mid 80's. This had a tremendous influence on the music that I still enjoy today, as did her stories of meeting people like Tommy James and the Shondells and the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd by getting press passes. She would act the role of photographer while her on-again, off-again boyfriend/best friend Larry would ask questions like a reporter. She even taught me a few chords on her guitar, which always seemed to be missing at least one string.
As we all got a little older, and Gina had her first job, we started seeing movies almost every single time we visited for a weekend. We saw all kinds of movies, from Disney classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Space Mountain, to Star Wars and The Omen and everything in between. I'm sure a lot of people would have found some of the movies I was watching at my age completely inappropriate, but I just remember loving it. I'm sure that by the time I'd seen the classic 1978 horror film Halloween, I'd seen more horror movies than any other kid in the fifth grade. She absolutely loves a good horror film, and I got to see so many of the classics because she wanted to have me along and to share the experience with me. To this day I still enjoy a good scare.
Most of the times, the movies we saw were at the drive-in and we'd spend an entire Friday night there, watching two or sometimes three movies for $3.00 a car load. Gina would spend the day popping popcorn and loading it into a trash bag that we would throw in the back of her Pinto before we would go. I loved being at the drive-in, and wish there was one nearby that I could take my own kids to once in a while. You could smell the popcorn, but not like at a movie theater. It was so much stronger in the confines of that little car. You could hear the popping sound of gravel as cars drove in and out of the huge parking lot that the drive-in was. All night, you'd hear cars rolling by, and everyone would honk their horns if someone turned their headlights on. Car horns were a part of what made the drive-in so awesome when I was a kid. How many times have you sat in a busy theater, wishing you had a car horn to honk at the group of people five rows back who were talking through the entire movie?
On those weekends that we went to an indoor theater, we would often hit the new video arcade in my hometown after the movie was over. Gina would sometimes play the games herself, but I remember her mostly watching my brother and I play. Unless it was pinball. One of the movies she took us to see was Tommy, a rock opera made by The Who, starring their lead singer, Roger Daltrey. The movie is about a young boy who is traumatized and loses his sight, hearing, and ability to speak. But oh he can play pinball. I remember how much my Aunt Gina loved to play pinball. If the arcade, bowling alley, or roller rink had a Tommy edition pinball game, she could play for hours on a single quarter. The game wasn't that easy, she was just that good.
Thankfully, her influence extended beyond movies, music, and video games. When she was a senior in high school, she picked up her first copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'd seen The Hobbit on her dresser, lying prone under a candle in the shape of one of those big heads on Easter Island. One rainy weekend when she was feeling too sick to take us anywhere and we were stuck in the house the whole time, I asked her if I could read The Hobbit. She looked at me and laughed, drawing a harsh cough from somewhere down in her chest. She smiled and told me that I could, but that I'd have to tell her all about what I'd read when I finished. I eagerly grabbed the paperback and started reading. I read all weekend long, taking breaks to eat and fall asleep both Friday and Saturday night with the book in my hands, waking in the morning to find that someone had covered me up and tucked me in on the couch.
By Sunday evening, just before it was time for us to go home for another week of school, I'd finished the book. Gina didn't believe me when I said I'd finished it, so she sat up in bed and asked me to tell her the story as I'd read it. So I spent about an hour giving her an eight-year-old perspective on the book. She sat there enraptured by the words as I spoke, her face beaming with pride. Honestly, when I look back at it, a mother's pride. When I was done with my first oral book report, I told her that the book mentioned more books, and asked if she had them and if I could read them, too. She got out of bed and pulled The Fellowship of the Ring out of a dresser drawer and handed it to me to take home with me so I could read it.
The best memories of my childhood all seem to center around my Aunt Gina. She was always going out of her way to make sure that my little brother and I, and sometimes our stepbrothers and even our friends, had the time of our lives. She has always managed to do that. Even today, when I fly down to visit my family in New Mexico, Gina and I will regularly spend time together, watching a movie after everyone else has fallen asleep. I take movies with me when I go, movies that she took me to see when I was a kid. My favorite day visiting her was sitting down to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. For almost 15 hours we sat watching the extended cuts of those movies, movies that are based on books that she gave me to read at the tender age of eight.
I love you, Gina. Thanks so much for everything.
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