"Aunt Lenia" By: Jeffrey Benvenuti

I got up that Christmas morning as I did on every Christmas morning. Early. At five am I crept down to the living room to take inventory of the mound of presents beneath the tree. I hadn't really slept at all, just laid in bed listening to my parents scramble around, pulling presents out of hiding places. I had heard them walk upstairs to their bedroom a few moments earlier, which meant that everything was in place downstairs. This was my cue to leap out of bed and take my first peek.
It was dark in the living room when I made it downstairs. Still through the darkness I could make out the silhouette of presents laid around our Christmas tree. I flipped on a lamp and began rummaging through the pile, lying all my presents to one side of the tree, carefully examining the shape and weight of each one as I did so. First were the large presents, followed by those with interesting shapes. Last I grabbed the long flat boxes, which must have been clothing. It appeared that I had rounded up all of them but thought it wise to perform one last scan. As I did so I uncovered one last box with my name on it. Written on the tag were the words “Merry Christmas, Love Aunt Lenia.” Reluctantly I moved the gift to the back of my stack, and then covered it with other gifts.
Aunt Lenia is my grandmother's sister. My family had never been particularly close to her and to this day I know very little about her. Still I will share with you what I do. First she is a true child of the depression. To call her a bargain hunter would be an understatement. As a child I imagined vivid scenes of her out in the wild tracking as if part of some Stone Age tribe. Her warpaint would be her blotchy make up. Her prey would be slightly damaged second hand goods. I would be following her, trying to keep up as she moved at super human speeds, leaping over fallen branches and sliding through brush as if a path had been marked for her which I could not see. Ultimately she would stop and peel back a bit of light brush, salivating at the mouth, to reveal a yard, tag, or garage sale. I was never certain what the difference was but I imagined my Aunt Lenia could tell me in explicit detail had I ever cared enough to ask.
I can recall my only visit to her house as a child. Her property looked just as you'd expect it to, like a perpetual yard sale, only no one was there to purchase anything. Her porch was lined with dying plants and a small army of worn and damaged ceramic garden figurines. Underneath her front door laid a John F. Kennedy doormat. Inside were the fruits of several decades of compulsive bargain shopping. A row of shelves along one wall overflowed with dolls and angel figures, all with missing hands or scratched faces. Tarnished teapots and pieces of those ceramic Christmas villages lined shelves on the opposing wall. The walls were covered with crusafixes and plaques of religious quotations. I spent a few hours there that day nervously picking at a grilled cheese and searching for anything to talk about with my Aunt. I never came up with anything.
Every year we would receive gifts from Aunt Lenia that reminded us of her junk collecting lifestyle and of just how poorly we knew each other. We never looked forward to them. In years passed I can recall opening boxes with my brother which contained broken action figures. My parents received such memorable gifts as half used make up and old books on marriage from couples that had most likely abandoned theirs. Still every year we acted grateful to receive them and every year we received more.
By now my brother and sister had woken up and made the same realization I had earlier. It was Christmas. Upstairs I heard my sister's little legs making their way into my parent’s room while my brother slowly moved downstairs to join me. Getting my parents out of bed was always the most difficult part of Christmas morning and I was glad my little sister had taken the initiative. It usually took about ten minutes to get them downstairs but waiting next to those presents made it feel like days. Eventually I heard the sound of my parent’s feet hit the floor upstairs and I knew my wait would soon be over. I looked through my presents deciding what to open first.
When my parents came downstairs the second wait began. My stepfather made coffee and my mother fumbled with the video camera. It was a well-known rule in my house that you open nothing on Christmas until my mother is filming you. She would ask us questions like “what did Santa bring you?” and “Is that a racecar?” as if the camera only picked up sound and we would have to narrate the entire morning. I never understood what she did with all of these tapes. Did she sit up at night after I had gone to bed and watch past Christmases over and over? My stepfather was always quick to vocalize this same thought.
Finally the moment arrived. With my stepfather perched in his chair, coffee in hand, and my mother eagerly filming we began tearing open our presents. I paid little attention to my brother and sister's gifts as I began uncovering toy after toy. Star wars actions figures and play sets laid in a circle around me. Next I began unwrapping those boxes, which I had accurately predicted as containing clothes. Socks and sweaters were tossed back into boxes and stacked back to the tree.
Now there was only one box left. It had the words “Love Aunt Lenia” tagged on it. I sat there looking at it until both my brother and sister found themselves in the same situation. My brother and I looked cautiously at our boxes as if they might contained a bomb or a loved ones limb care of the Russian mob, but my sister, too young to know tore open her last present. Inside stood a badly damaged and filthy plastic rocking horse. A large crack along one side made the hollow and equally filthy interior visible. One of the handles had snapped off of the side making this a pony for the advanced rider only. My sister looked puzzled by the gift. “Why is this horse broken?” she asked only to receive a nervous “I'm not sure” from my mother, who had stopped filming just as my sister began unwrapping her horse. She looked at my brother and I, waiting for us to open our last presents. My box contained an assortment of unicorn stickers and markers clearly intended for a young girl about half my age. I looked over at my brother who had not made his gift visible. At this point I should note that my brother is three years my senior and was in the 9th grade at the time, something that seemed to have been unknown to my Aunt Lenia, or at the very least had slipped her mind. Slowly he raised his gift for all of us to see. It was a little mermaid backpack complete with matching lunch box and thermos. My stepfather made no attempt to hold back his laughter. My brother seemed horrified, visibly nervous at his age to have such an object in his possession. “I love that movie!” screamed my sister as she failed to understand why my brother did not share her enthusiasm for the gift. We all tucked our gifts from Aunt Lenia aside and opened the cards which had been attached to them. This was a rude pastime for my siblings and I, opening gifts before cards. My mother had tried for years to remedy this with little success. Each card had clearly been reused and contained inside a printed religious message, a message from Aunt Lenia herself scrawled atop a patch of liquid paper, and a check for one dollar.
After we had opened our gifts and had eaten all the candy from our stockings we dressed and went to an unusually early dinner at my Aunt Tammy's house. At some point, as it did every year, the conversation turned to Aunt Lenia and gifts we had all received from her. Like war stories we went around the table one at a time, each person trying to top the last to have spoken. After we all had a laugh at Aunt Lenia's expense the conversation turned to the less entertaining topic of what to do with these gifts.
My parents always told me that she meant well and that she was just a peculiar old woman. As a child I always thought of this as an excuse. I had it all worked out in my mind. Aunt Lenia was a crazy old witch who didn't like us because we weren't Jesus or JFK. This made perfect sense to me as a child.
As time passed the gifts stopped coming. What little contact my family made with my Aunt Lenia was now a thing of the past. It was only last year that I learned she was in a nursing home. She now has Alzheimer's and it looks as though my chance to get to know her better is gone. Thinking back on the fun I had making fun of my Aunt Lenia for these gifts and the character I made her into to my friends I feel overcome with guilt. Here was a woman whom had obviously been suffering the early symptoms of a terrible disease for years, and the only thing her own family had thought to say about it was that she “meant well.” We felt entitled to something from someone we had made no effort to know, and then ridiculed her for the things she gave us. When I recall the laughs I had at her expense both with my family and friends I am reminded of that. That phrase we used to justify the horrible things we said. She did mean well. We didn't.