Top 185 Aunts Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

I heard more of the stories from my mother and my granny and my aunts that would describe what they had known that he didn't often talk about. I remember seeing [grandfather] as a child. He was working in a mine that was fairly close to their home there in Betsy Lane, Ky., and it was so close in proximity that he wouldn't clean up or shower there. He would just drive back home. And I remember one time seeing him come in and it was like seeing an alien person show up because he was still covered in coal dust and soot, and it had a profound impact on me.

Paper Matches My aunts washed dishes while the uncles squirted each other on the lawn with garden hoses. Why are we in here, I said, and they are out there? That’s the way it is, said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one. I have the rages that small animals have, being small, being animal. Written on me was a message, “At Your Service,” like a book of paper matches. One by one we were taken out and struck. We come bearing supper, our heads on fire.

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."

Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'être. Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had Ph.D.s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu's were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.

I used to be Amish. I had to stay a lot with my grandparents or aunts and uncles who are Amish, so I was sort of partially Amish. When I go back there now I still get into that culture. I can drive a horse and buggy because they don't use cars. And, of course, there's no electricity. I respect them a lot. The Amish like to live a very plain lifestyle, the way they think God intended. It sort of brings you back to like Little House on the Prairie days or something.