She was my mother’s eldest sister, and her favorite, named after their mother, Pauline. She had been – it was said – a standout basketball player at Waterville High, which astonished me as a kid. Really? Aunt Polly? She was also a good student, but then all of the Byrnes’ 12 children did well in school. All? Mostly all. She was born in 1913; my mother 15 years later in 1928. For this reason, Polly helped raise my mother, developing a bond between them that lasted all their lives.
Polly want off to Albany Normal College, where she studied to be a teacher; a Latin professor she loved would – years later – inspire my mother to take and teach Latin herself, Julia something. I can’t remember her name, only that she swept my mother away into a deep love of language and academia, as she had, years before, my aunt. She went to Tennessee after college, to nanny a child, a family? I don’t know those details but I do know that while there she met and fell in love with my Uncle Hubert. He was a good old boy originally from Nashville, but they settled in Memphis.
She played bridge at the masters’ level and wore cat’s eye glasses like a lot of women did in the ’50s and ’60s, and shirts that matched her husbands in pattern and style. People – couples – did that then, much more than they do now.
Sometime when I was a child, or even perhaps before I was born, there was a terrible automobile accident; Aunt Polly was nearly killed; her eyesight, balance and depth perception never returned, but she lived. I know this because my mother spoke of it, spoke of why her sister didn’t drive, why her glasses were so thick, why she covered up more, even in summer, why she had that scar on her neck, why each step she took it was as if her foot, hovering there momentarily, was looking for a safe place to land – because it was, she was.
Whatever her physical challenges, she was adored by my mother, and by her husband. She had 2 children, Paul and Mary, but everyone knew Mary was adopted, even if it was never spoken of, out-loud, in smoky rooms where little pitchers like myself had big ears.
Whatever her challenges, she was one of the most loving people I ever knew, unfailingly kind to me, always, taking the part of the ‘neglected middle child’ (her words), even while she was the eldest girl, even while I knew my mother – having named her own eldest daughter after her sister, and their mother – would have been fine if aunt Polly had ignored me completely. It meant something, Aunt Polly coming occasionally to my defense, it was a check on my mother’s spite. It was important to my mother that others not, ever, see the side of her personality she showed me all the time, especially those she loved, and needed to think well of her, like her beloved older sister.
Hubert, who was born 9 years before his wife, died 9 years before she did, almost to the day, in 1989. In her last decade, Aunt Polly remained as soft and kind as she had ever been, but her mind began to fail, as well as what sight had been left to her. Hubert had kept her going, grounded, protected, guided, needed, loved. She lived for a few years in the Catskills near my mother, in a private assisted living situation, then was moved back down south close to her daughter, but the details escape me, although I know there were issues, complications, trouble – all the stuff of ‘end of life’, when letting go. My mother outlived her elder, favorite sister by another gap of 9 years, also almost to the day, her own mind having slipped into darkness, her own steps and forward movement hampered by doubt, and fear.