This is a pic of my Aunt Gypsy. She looks so like my sister M that if I didn't know that M had not worked as a short order cook in the 50's, I would say that it was her. Same overweight, same heavy glasses, same manner of dressing, tennis shoes and socks and a long dress. Although you can't see it here, they even have the same gap between their front teeth.
Gypsy married Charles Ager and divorced soon after. There was some problem, I don't know what. I was a child, it was spoken of in whispers. Short as the marriage was - 10 weeks, I think they said - it left her pregnant. She had a son, much adored Chuck.
She took endless photos of him as a child, same as M did with her son. She spent her scant earnings on keeping him current with the latest 50's little boy toys. I have a suitcase full of pics and early childhood accomplishments.
No one knows where Chuck is, by the way. My father and Uncle N. tried unsuccessfully to find him.
You see, Gypsy, like so many of her siblings, developed Huntington's. When Chuck grew up he left, probably running away from the family genetic curse, or trying to. Did he marry, have children, inherit Huntington's? We don't know.
Aunt Emma was left to care for Gypsy. Emma seemed to take in all the stragglers of the family - a girl named Katherine (I don't know her story), Evelyn who also had Huntington's and then Gypsy. Was Emma the caregiver of that group of siblings? How did she feel about it? Did she chaff sometimes at the role?
I am left, perhaps, as the caregiver for my sister M.
The other night she calls crying. Her son "borrowed" her scant savings and now has vanished off the radar. Just like Chuck.
Am I Emma? Was she conflicted while caring for her ailing siblings?
Are there some people life just designates to be caregivers? Why is that? Why can't they get out of it?
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