Everyone has an Aunt Ruth. Everyone at some point in his life will become his brother’s keeper – either out of love or duty or both, and if you’re lucky the love outlasts the duty.
In the author’s case the lovable Aunt Ruth of her childhood had become old and crotchety, strange and unpredictable; not at all the happy, fun-loving aunt of her memories. The youngest of her father’s eight siblings – and the last survivor – was newly widowed, childless, and stubbornly living 1500 miles away from her sole caregiver. When Aunt Ruth called in the middle of the night and cried, "I need you," Joyce flew to her side and never looked back. That’s how she became Aunt Ruth’s daughter, watchdog, Girl Friday, and punching bag.
Aunt Ruth tested every survival skill her niece could muster – including her faith and her sense of humor. In the end, with laughter as her strongest ally, the author discovered that love is more powerful than pride and much more satisfying. This memoir of their battles and their victories will give hope and cheer to all the beleaguered caregivers of the world. And they are legion.
Joyce Pounds Hardy is all things a woman can be: a wife, a widow, a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a sister, an aunt, and, of course, a niece who as the sole caregiver for an unpredictable aunt survives her idiosyncrasies and caustic tongue with resilient humor and love.
She is a graduate of Rice University with a B.A. in English, first woman president of the Association of Rice Alumni, recipient of the Hugh Scott Cameron Award for Distinguished Service to Rice University, first woman Director of the Owl Club, Rice’s Outstanding Woman Athlete Award bears her name, first woman to be honored with The Distinguished "R" Award, but if you ask her, she wants to be remembered as endowing an annual Poetry Prize for Rice students sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.
In 1989, she was the winner of The Texas Writers Recognition Award, a grant given by The Texas Commission On Arts under the auspices of The Texas Institute Of Letters for publication of her first book of poems, THE RELUCTANT HUNTER, Latitudes Press. Her second book, a collection of writings, poems, and paintings in collaboration with four Paris American Academy friends, entitled FRENCH WINDOWS, was published by Eakin Press, 1995.
She has been chosen Juried Poet of the Houston Poetry Fest four times and featured as Guest Poet in 1997. Her work has been published in literary journals and magazines, as well as being featured at First Friday, Barnes and Noble, Brentano’s, Border’s, Texas Circuit, KTRU radio, and in the taping her work for the Fondren Library at Rice. She has studied creative writing and history of art six summers at the Paris American Academy, reading her poetry at various venues all over Paris. During the season, she writes a weekly column for the Rice Football Web page
Joyce Pounds Hardy is a native Houstonian, an Elder of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, mother of four boys and one girl, grandmother of thirteen, great-grandmother of one, and a lucky, lucky lady to have been married to two old Rice sweethearts, Tom Hardy for forty years, and John McDonald for four. They were her greatest fans.
She pulled into a rather decrepit-looking station that was the oil industry's answer to a Mom and Pop store, two pumps and a seemingly busy garage business complete with greasy mechanics--probably the best in Coronado, and a pleasant proprietor who came out to greet us.
"Sorry to hear about Gene, Mrs. Warner. We'll all miss him."
"Thanks, Joe. Would you fill it up, please?"
"Sure thing. Give me the key."
"What key?"
"The key that unlocks the gas tank."
"Oh, I don't have anything but these," she said, handing him the set of keys that were in the ignition.
Joe looked at both of the keys on the ring and shook his head. "It's not on here. Look in the pocket; maybe it's in there."
I opened the pocket, shuffled through all the stuff inside but found no key.
"Don't you have a key to open it?" she asked Joe, hopefully. Aunt Ruth was beginning to get mad at Uncle Gene all over again.
"No," said Joe. "Probably it's home somewhere."
"Well, isn't that a bitch. Why'd he leave me without a gas tank key?"
"Aunt Ruth, he didn't know he was going to die. C'mon, let's go home and look for it, and I'll bring the car back and get it filled up after we find it."
We never did find the key, although I brought a whole coffee can full of assorted keys back to Joe, and he very patiently tried a dozen of them with no luck. Finally I got a locksmith to make one for me and Joe filled the Rust Bucket up to the brim. But both of us agreed that Aunt Ruth would be better off not knowing that Uncle Gene had probably taken the key with him.
Aunt Ruth came into this world about the same time as the Model A, and it's my guess that she was driving my Daddy's new Ford before she was old enough to ride a bicycle. He was pretty protective of his baby sister, but he probably let her wrap him around her little finger when it came to teaching her to drive. Only difference was that my Daddy was Mr. Conservative and Aunt Ruth loved the fast lane.
Nowadays, however, she hated the fast lane and she hated traffic, which occurred only twice a day in Coronado, at 7:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., when the Navy personnel passed through going to and from North Island Navy Base. But even in off-hours, when we went to the Commissary or the Navy Exchange or the Senior Center for bingo, she avoided Orange Avenue because it was too busy and had too many traffic lights on it.
Instead, we would go the length of the island on E, which had a stop sign on every corner. As we began to cross each street, Aunt Ruth had to gun the engine, propelling the car down into a drainage dip, then up and over a camel-humped center stripe, and down again into the dip on the other side before we could coast gratefully to the next stop sign.
"Why won't this stupid thing go?" she would holler at the sky, probably at Uncle Gene, now safely in Heaven.
"When you accelerate, Aunt Ruth, the transmission slips and we're lucky to be going forward at all," I said, as we rocked back and forth, automatically at first and then with a bit of desperation, to help the car get going.
The squeak of the clutch set my teeth on edge, but I didn't have the courage to watch the shuffling of her feet on that maneuver. I was too busy looking for oncoming traffic which she totally ignored.
