Aunty Jean

 

Aunty Jean wasn't really my Aunty Jean, she was my great aunt, Mum's aunty. Like my grandmother, she married late - fiercely independent were the Jarrett girls - and then she was widowed. Mum had lodged with Aunty Jean when Jean was single and Mum was studying to be a teacher at Prahran teacher's college so she was very close to her.  said her husband was the best thing that happened to her because she had been very prim and proper before then and he had taken that stuffiness out of her. Mum said the telltale moment of the change was when she rang Aunty Jean and asked how things were and Aunty Jean said, "We are both well but it is absolutely pissing down here". 

Aunty Jean worked all her life. She was a chiropodist which these days, we just call a podiatrist. She rather shockingly chopped off one of her dead toes. She told me she became a chiropodist because she was forced to wear hand-me-down shoes all the time and that caused her to have many problems with her feet. This is why we never wore hand-me-down shoes.

Aunty Jean lived in Airlie Street, South Yarra in a tiny little terrace house. Her nickname amongst the neighbours was Mrs Blue Green because they were reputedly the only colours she wore. Airlie street is very steep and runs adjacent to the Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens. It's so steep you have to turn the steering wheel of your car to make sure your car doesn't accidentally roll down the hill. Our car nearly did this one time we visited Aunty Jean thanks to me. Rebecca and I were in the backseat, primary school age, and I remember saying to Rebecca let's see what the happens when I release the hand brake and the car started rolling backwards. Mum flipped out. I put the handbrake back in position and the danger was averted.

Before you even set foot in Aunty Jean's house you were always greeted, no set upon from behind the screen door by her very loud, yapping, snarling Daschund. She had two over the course of our time visiting her. A red one and a black and tan and they were both adorable once Aunty Jean had told them off for barking at family and then brought us into the sitting room for afternoon tea.

Aunty Jean's house was amazing and in my child's eye, cavernous and with the smell of beeswax from the dark timber furniture throughout. It was on a deep block and Aunty Jean had covered every square foot of outside ground with plants. All along the length of the wall between her house and the neighbours she had planted violets and baby's breath and all sorts of shade-loving plants. There was a fountain too trickling away. If you went out the side door from the kitchen our favourite place to go was her sun room which was a separate building right on the fenceline that she had converted into a room with big upholstered day bed. It was the best. You could visit her on a freezing cold day and go out to the sun room and lie on the big day bed and soak up all the radiance of the sun coming in through the windows.

One of my favourite memories of Aunty Jean was her retelling of the time she was waiting for a tram to come down Punt road and a man accosted her and tried to snatch her handbag off her. She would have been 50 or so by then and she held on like grim death and glared at him and told him to let go. Unfortunately, the strap on her handbag snapped during the altercation and the thief got away with her bag.