Our family was an island floating in a sea of loneliness.  No grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins sailed in our waters but the Flower Aunties bloomed strongly in my imagination.    My grandmother, Violet, had died when Mum was born and, according to my mother, she came from a large family of girls all named after flowers. The details were scant however and Mum was always elusive when I asked for concrete facts. ‘How many sisters are there?   What are their names Mum?’ I’d plead.  No satisfying answers came and eventually I stopped asking questions.  In my childish mind they remained ethereal; pale outlines of floating flower heads with ghostly bodies draped in diaphanous fabric.               

By the time I was a teenager, the Flower Aunties had gained more substance, fueled by the novels I was reading.  They had names;  Poppy, Daisy, Lily, Jasmine, Daphne  and Rose; six cottage garden blooms.   I could see them in my mind’s eye; prim dark haired women, immaculately dressed in pastel silk tea dresses with matching purses, together on a day out in town.  Their heads bobbing in unison agreeing to a purchase, leaning together to whisper over a handsome gentleman, giggling in delight. 

Meanwhile I found ways to fill the gap left by my absent elders.  I adopted childless friends of my parents, who kindly reciprocated my attentions and included me in their weekends and outings.  Some of my friends had extended families and, from an early age, I tried to infiltrate their family space. I relished the time spent in the company of someone else’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

The years passed and the Flower Aunties faded in and out of my mind in the bedlam of adult life.  I was looking forward, getting on with things and I never looked back.  One day I came across a quote, ‘How can you know where you are going, if you don’t know where you’ve come from?’  It came as an epiphany … I needed to find the Flower Aunties!    The search was slow and laborious but eventually I located the details of all of my Grandmother’s siblings.  There were three sisters and six brothers and not a flower to be picked among them; Leslie, Edna, Robert, Lyle, Clarence, Oliver, Harold, Mary and Lillian.  I felt both saddened and strangely relieved. Here was the flesh and bone truth about these relatives.

Photos and anecdotes emerged to show that my mother had indeed known at least two of her Aunties, Edna and Mary.  They were well and truly alive through my childhood and other siblings of my Grandmothers were also alive into my adulthood. Clarence, Harold and Lillian all lived only a 20 minute drive from our Sydney suburb.  How would it have been to spend time with them and their families and what would have been the gems of insights and information they might have passed on?  By all accounts, all of their lives had not been easy and they were a resilient bunch.  I wondered how it might have helped me at times of struggle and challenge to know these tough and gritty people were behind me, a few still walking the earth.  I don’t really know why Mum denied their existence, although once, forgetting the story she'd spun,  she told me her mother's siblings ‘were a rough bunch.’   Despite the non existence of the Flower Aunties, I was grateful for connecting with the truth about the Morris family, albeit posthumously.