Ancestor Altar and Journal

Today, I am thinking of Aunt Betty. My mother's sister, Elizabeth Fennelly. She died several years ago, and she was always an enigma to me. My mother's next-to-youngest sister, never in all the time I knew her had a man in her life, a little distant, a dedicated traveller (first in the family to re-visit Ireland), she never let anyone know her very well. She was a legal secretary and law clerk for many years, and she also took care of Gran (and appropriated whatever she liked after Gran died, to the upset of many people in the family, but she believed she deserved it). She was so unlike all the other women in our family that I never made a connection with her. Since I have been thinking about her, over the past several years, a few specific things have come to my mind. In her era, there was practically no such thing as a woman who was single by choice. I find myself wondering if perhaps she might have been a lesbian, with no way of knowing that nor any resources to become who she was. She also spoke bitterly against the Catholic Church in private, whilst scrupulously keeping to every iota of religious observance in the public eye. I wonder how she really felt about the church, and why? She is the one who taught me to read the tea leaves and to discern the weather, and answers to questions, by the flight of birds and the movement of clouds. She had a reputation for scrupulous honesty, but she also helped her sister Ellen do a spell to take away all her ex-husband's money because she thought Harry had mistreated Ellen. She was a very complicated person, and I hardly knew her. Now that she has died, I keep wondering if I missed something. I will be inviting her to Dumb Supper this year, and see if she will come and talk to me.

I will be posting pictures of the ancestor altar when I take some. On the dining room table this year, being the focus of the entire room, as I feel is appropriate.

And tonight I watched the Veep Debacle....erm, debate....and I am not at all sanguine about what might happen in November. Something is wrong when SP does not sound like an idiot. I am really afraid she cleans up too good to be as ridiculous as she really is....