I had my Aunt Rosie, who was famous and then not, so I got a lesson in fame early on. And I understood how little it has to do with you. And also how you could use it.
There are two things. There was the moral responsibility, and that, first, is creating an atmosphere where the security forces can kill with impunity, where they can turn up at a place, shoot seven people - really at point-blank fashions - and then get away with it and be, in fact, promoted. And then there is the actual responsibility, the governmental responsibility. My aunt's government forbade us, initially, from filing a police report - which is every Pakistani citizen's right under the law.
"Oh!" said my aunt, "I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting. "
His name's Nash. " Aunt Val took a butter knife from the silverware drawer. "What year is he?" I groaned inwardly. "Senior. ". . . here we go. . . Her smile was a little too enthusiastic. "Well that's wonderful!" Of course, what she really meant was "Rise from the shadows, social leper, and walk in the bright light of acceptance!
My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were all funny, and I felt that energy, that delivery, that timing, that sarcasm. All that stuff seeped into my brain.
I come from an enormous and very close family. I have over a dozen aunts and uncles in Pakistan, dozens of cousins. I have many close friends. I have received so much love in Lahore that the city always pulls me.
Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.
I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.
No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won't forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we'll include them in our future.
Culture is already there and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from two thousand years ago as their best defense. When you have in front of you flesh and blood people who are your brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, co-workers and neighbors and they love each other and they just want to go through life with someone.
This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.
[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.
Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical. ” “I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?” “The way you tell it, it is.
Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.
And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?
Her aunt Sol had once told Shai to smile at the worst insults and snap at the minor ones. That way, no man would know your heart.
Imagine that you wanted your children to learn the names of all their cousins, aunts and uncles. But you never actually let them meet or play with them. You just showed them pictures of them, and told them to memorize their names. Each day you'd have them recite the names, over and over again. You'd say, "OK, this is a picture of your great-aunt Beatrice. Her husband was your great-uncle Earnie. They had three children, your uncles Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo. Harpo married your aunt Leonie. . . yadda, yadda, yadda. "
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?
Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America's obesity statistics. Personally, I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car.
At the age of three my grand aunt proclaimed her independence by categorically refusing to have her feet bound, resolutely tearing off the bandages as fast as they were applied.