PAST FAUX PAS NO LONGER IMPORTANT

[My maternal grandmother, Nina Portfors (1886-1955) had two younger sisters, Bessie and Muriel. These were Mother’s aunts, hereinafter affectionately called Aunt Bessie and Aunt Muriel.]

It was a Sunday afternoon in 1965. Aunt Muriel was coming from Calgary, and we were to meet her at the bus station in Lewiston, some 45 miles from our home in Orofino. The next day, Mother and Aunt Muriel would drive to Portland to see about Aunt Bessie, who had to be moved to a nursing home.

Mother was fixing dinner as well as packing for the trip, so she asked my half-brother, Chuck (always called “Charles” by my parents and family elders), if he would pick up Aunt Muriel at the bus station. He was willing enough to go, but it had been years since he’d seen Aunt Muriel. He wasn’t sure he would recognize her, so Mother assigned me to go with him. (I was 16; he was 29.) I was happy to go. Riding in Chuck’s new Ford Mustang convertible was a lark!

Well, we met Aunt Muriel at the bus as planned. I explained that we had come to get her because Mother was busy, etc. I thought she looked at me kinda funny, but she didn’t say anything. I crawled into the back of the Mustang for the return trip to Orofino, seating Aunt Muriel in the passenger seat next to Chuck. (If you remember those Mustangs, they were two-seaters; the backseat was just a bench.) Again, she looked at me quizzically, and again, I didn’t understand. I kept up the conversation on the way home and thought I was doing a darn good job. I was, after all, the youngest person in the group, and the adults weren’t much help.

Later that evening, Mother called me aside for a stern lecture. Aunt Muriel had confided to Mother that she didn’t recognize Chuck – er, Charles. She had thought he was my boyfriend whom I had failed to introduce. Mother blamed me for this confusion. I should have said, “Aunt Muriel, you remember Charles, don’t you?” It seemed incongruous to me that Aunt Muriel would think Chuck was my boyfriend. After all, Chuck was OLD! As we traveled and Chuck and I conversed about family, it dawned on her that this was “Charles.”

To this day, I remain a bit miffed over this scolding. After all, did Mother scold Chuck? He could have said, “Hi Aunt Muriel; remember me – Charles? It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?” Or, Mother herself could have foreseen the confusion and reminded us to be sure Aunt Muriel knew he was Charles. OR – lastly, Aunt Muriel could simply have asked, “And who is this?”

But in recent conversation with Chuck, he more or less said I need to get over it. He says it no longer matters, along with a lot of other stuff in the past. KW