Outside my immediate family, the relatives I was closest to were my great-aunts (my mother's mother's sisters). Of the four, I was closest to the two in Vancouver, both of whom lived alone, one a widow, the other a spinster. Because my mother hosted more than her share of family dinners, I saw a lot of my great-aunts at Xmas, Easter and Thanksgiving. Neither were particularly interesting (to me), but when together, oh how they bickered!
Here is Proust on his great-aunt:
"My great-aunt did more than sample the dishes so as to give her opinion with a quietness which would tolerate but not admit contradiction. Over a novel, or a poem, things she was an expert in, she always differed, with a woman's humility, to the opinion of those more competent. She believed that to be the fluctuating domain of caprice in which the preference of the individual is unable to establish the truth." (52)
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