I used the solar flared up thin veil for good early today.
Had a chat with my dad’s dad to clarify some story points, genealogically speaking[ if you hafta ask, don’t. You’re not ready lol].
The impetus for even asking him to chat was recalling heartfelt conversations with my mom’s mom after a series of triggering incidents in the fifth grade with my peers. I got my writer head intel and moseyed on.
About an hour later I saw this and grinned big as day…
This Aunty is very close to my mom’s mom’s face when I got here, looking straight like the stylish lil duck-footed virgoan woman that helped rear me with an iron grappling fist always at the ready. I was just taller than her height by third grade[5’7″] and lorded it over her forever like only a gangly giant child with her head could. But it really only hit me as I am writing this how TALL that was for her blood. It was this strange realization that she took the ribbing and liked it because she’d been her tallest female sibling all her life. Her mom was a fiery wee person and her dad was a giant, but her stepdad was a mean wee person who produced a clutch of chicks that didn’t clear five feet with her mom.
She was the only one I didn’t drive crazy being 100% me because we both knew she’d kill me. Didn’t stop me lol…but us both knowing the murder in her …was beautiful. I could be as “if imma die, imma die~” unabashedly reckless with her as long as I didn’t do anything to make her jump on me lol. It was a thin line that was very fun to dance on.
I’d skimmed over the initial convo recall that’d made the reach out to my dad’s dad happen but seeing this badassed “aunty” was the most “say hi in the spirit” virgoan gramma-growl ever.
She was stylish as F too. My mom got her antique from both her parents. I still dream about these shoes of hers that had me gag all HS…I’d just stare in 1 & a 1/2 sizes too big furious love at. Now I’m like damn, she was that size then!? fuck, man.
It was lighthearted and goofy, proceedings-wise until it got to this shot where the aunty is seen from the back, with her hair down and lightly waved down her back. My breath caught in my chest a bit. Pure sentimentality. She used to put me to work doing her hair when we slept over. and until 2000[born in ’16] her hair was like this woman’s. It never went all the way white. The nape of her neck up to maybe an inch and a hair below her crown was inky black, thick and straight, with this one natural body wave that cut across he back as it fell down it. She’d have me pop it up in rollers as we watched jeopardy and wheel of fortune, or baseball, which she loved and I to this day have no patience for or understanding of the rules of at all except by grousing osmosis.
It was a true throat hitch and an awwww, blush grinning, pure as day when I saw aunty Qin’s hair in this one shot, completely transported. You can see the black glowing out from underneath those waves.