Bessie was born in 1865, I’m not sure where. There are Mohawk ancestors on my mother’s side of the family, so I guess the Great Lakes region someplace but I have no idea.

Bessie married at some point and went with her new husband to Alaska. This would still be well before the turn of the century, sometime between 1885 and 1895. They arrived at their destination, he showed her his house – a dirt-floored cabin and she said, “You expect me to live here?” He said, “Yes, you’re my wife.” Bessie never saw him again after that day. She returned to the continental United States, but she also traveled to Hawaii by sailing ship. By the time they reached Hawaii, which back then was still a kingdom, they had run out of anything to eat on board except for lemon meringue pies. So she arrived in Hawaii eating lemon meringue pie.

Bessie was a painter. In Hawaii, she painted the king of Hawaii. Her pictures hang in some Hawaiian museum. This is all family legend, you understand. Bessie was a great storyteller.

She was the spinster aunt the girls in the family loved to see arrive on a visit. She had wild stories to tell about world travel and adventure, something that surely brightened the days of girls growing up under strict parents in the cultural desert of Southwest Washington State. My mother often quotes Bessie, who said that girls should absolutely wear bright, flowery clothes, since they’ll have time enough to wear black when they get old. My mother still buys my daughters flowery duds, I’m guessing because of Bessie.

Bessie, as she got older, moved in with her younger brother and took care of him until she was 97. At that time, she went to the doctor for a checkup. She was 100% healthy, but she fell off the examination table and broke her hip. She spent the next 10 years in a nursing home, since the hip never healed right.

She died in 1972, Oregon State’s oldest registered voter, at 107. I don’t remember much about her, since I was 12 when she died and old people scared me. I remember that she was sweet and always knew what to say – how big you were getting, how much you looked like your dad, and so on. But she was over 100 when I met her, and getting that monkey-man look ancient people get, and the rest home had that unfortunate smell.

So I was too stupid to get much out of her magic as a kid. But others weren’t. She brightened the lives, permanently, of generations of kids into whose lives she brought color and Hawaii and standing up to your husband and lemon meringue pie and painting. Relatives like this are national treasures. Slowly this dawns on me, better late than never. Not all old people are old people, at least not in their souls. I’m relieved to see that my kids aren’t afraid of old people.