Lillian Orinick 1928-2011

School Days

When I began this blog, I made a decision not to write about any living people.  As a result, I left out one member of my mother’s family, her sister Lillian.  Aunt Lil passed away last Friday, so I can now talk about my favorite aunt.  She was the last of the 7 sisters and 3 brothers.  This is going to be a long post, but I will not apologize for that. There is no way I can say enough.

Lillian was born on April 27, 1928, the youngest child of Mathew and Anna Orinick.  Her baptismal name was Lydia, but everyone called her Lilly.  Lilly’s father died when she was 7. Her mother was not well during Lilly’s early years so her oldest sister, Mary, raised her from the time she came into this world. Their mother died when Lil was about 11, so she never really knew either of her parents.   Mary was the only mother Lil knew and Lil was devoted to her.

I don’t know much about her life as a young woman.  I was told that she contracted tuberculosis in her early 20’s and recovered for a time in my parents’ home.  By the time I was old enough to know her, Lilly and her sister Helen had rented an apartment together in Kearny, New Jersey.  Neither sister ever married, and they lived together from that point on until the last few years of their lives.   I can’t suppress a smile thinking of how they sometimes acted like an old married couple.  They had different personalities and often fought, but they also loved and took care of each other.  When I wrote about Helen in a previous post, it was very difficult not to mention Lilly.  As long as I can remember, it was rarely Helen or Lilly - for almost everything it was Helen AND Lilly.

Lil's professional side

Lil worked as a radiology technician, but her passion was art.  In her spare time she loved to paint. When I was in high school she took me to my first art exhibit.  I don’t know what happened to all her paintings, but I have one work of art that she did for me as a birthday present.  It is the face of a clown crafted out of seashells that I collected on the beach at Seaside Heights, New Jersey.  She told me that she used every shell I gave her, fitting it into the face like pieces of a puzzle made to come together.  She never signed her work though.  Once, I asked her to sign my clown and she refused, saying that if she ever became famous for her art, signatures would cause trouble that she didn’t wish on me.   I never understood that, but I respected her wish and never asked again.

She also loved to return to the farm where she grew up.  As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, her sister Mary lived on the family farm all her life.  Helen and Lil would drive to Pennsylvania every weekend to visit and help on the farm.  They worked in the vegetable gardens with Mary and in the fields with their brother Ted and his wife Shirley.  On weekends when my family made the trip as well, we worked with them and went out in the evening to one of the local taverns.

 Lil was everybody’s favorite aunt. The main reason for this was that she didn’t just go off with the adults – she always had time for the kids.  She taught many of us to drive in the empty fields after the crops were harvested.  In taverns, she often sat at a table with the kids or played pool with us instead of sitting at the bar with the other adults.  Sometimes she and Helen would take us out for dinner so the rest of the adults could do their own thing.  The first time I ever ate steamed clams was on an outing with Lil, Helen, and two cousins close to my age.  She took pleasure in introducing us to this new delicacy. 

Several times Helen and Lil invited me to go to the farm with them when my parents couldn’t make it that weekend, or couldn’t join us until later.  The three of us would sing popular songs on the drive.  None of us could carry a tune well, but we sure had fun.

Lil's dog King, taking a nap

When I was in high school, a friend of mine had a German Sheppard pup that they needed to give away.  I mentioned it to Lilly and she adopted King.  This was the only dog I ever knew her to own, and she loved him dearly.  She swore he understood everything she said and taught him some interesting tricks: like chewing gum and spitting it out and smoking a cigar.  This dog would sleep on a day-bed on the farm with Lil when she was there. Lil was heartbroken the day King wandered off into the woods on the farm and a hunter mistook him for a fox and shot him.

Lil on the farm

Lilly had strong opinions on everything and was not afraid to speak up and hold her ground in an argument.  She didn’t care about clothes, wearing whatever piece of cloth she got her hands on when she was not at work.  She enjoyed a good cigar and a beer, as well as some good ole hard cider from the keg in the farmhouse cellar. 

When I was about 13, I decided I wanted to volunteer as a Candy Striper for the summer.  Lilly worked at Elizabeth General Hospital at the time and she arranged for me to volunteer there.  That was the same summer that saw race riots all over the U.S.  She drove out of her way to pick me up each morning and bring me home at night, taking the long route to avoid driving through the blocked off areas of Newark, NJ.  We had plenty of time on the drives to talk and get to know each other.  

As Lilly got older, it got harder for her to get around.  Like several other members of our family, she developed FacioScapuloHumeral  Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD).   She retired early and was eventually confined to a wheelchair.  Helen had trouble with her balance, but they made a great pair.  Helen would push the wheelchair, holding onto it for balance as well.   Even as their lives got more difficult, they never stopped trying to help younger family members.   They continued to be there for great-nephews and nieces as they were for my generation.  

After retirement, Lil and Helen moved to the house in Edison that they had invested in years ago with their brother Bill.  The house was actually 2 houses, a large main house that they divided into 2 apartments and a small caretaker’s cottage in the back.  They moved into the cottage and continued to rent out the house for income. 

Helen, Mary, Lilly & Daisy on Mary's 90th Birthday, May 1997

Over the past few years, Lilly’s condition deteriorated both physically and mentally, to the point where Helen could no longer take care of her.  Helen was also beginning to need a wheelchair. Lilly was moved to a nursing home near one of my cousins.  My cousin was another of those who benefited greatly over the years from Helen and Lilly’s loving attention, and he paid back in kind.   He and his wife checked in on Lil regularly and made sure her bills were paid and she had everything she needed.  He also brought Helen to live in a house next door to him.  

Now they are both gone, but they will never be forgotten by any of the 13 nieces and nephews, their children, their children’s children, and all the friends whose lives they touched.  I’m sure my brothers, sister, nieces and nephews could add some great stories to this memoir and I hope they will.

To My Family: Thank You For Making Me Who I Am

Today I heard a podcast interview with the author of a new book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter (by Peggy Orenstein).”   It talks about the nature versus nurture aspects of raising a daughter to be comfortable in being a woman yet open to all the opportunities and possibilities in life.   This made me reflect on my own upbringing and to appreciate the way my parents allowed me to be who I am.  

I loved my father dearly and from an early age, spent as much time as I could with him.   When he worked on household repairs or on cars in the garage, I was often by his side offering to help.  He never turned me away.  There was always some little way I could help, like holding a flashlight or getting a tool he needed.  He wasn’t hesitant to teach me about what he was doing, and never made me feel like I couldn’t learn to do something because I was a girl.  In the evening when he was relaxing after a hard day’s work, I would sometimes sit with him on the front porch and he would tell me stories about the family.  Inside, we would watch TV together, westerns, Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, and others.

My brothers also took his lead.  My oldest brother was married by the time I was 5, but he came to visit often, and “let me” help him wash his car.  When he restored an old car and when he built a boat in our back yard, he was happy to answer my questions and show off his work to me. 

My second brother taught me in other ways.  When I was little, he let me play with his toy cowboys and Indians in my sandbox, and built me a snow horse to ride in the winter.  He also tried to teach me how a car engine worked.  In addition to the cowboys and Indians, I also got to play with his old trains and erector sets. 

Now I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I was raised a tomboy.  I had plenty of dolls and stuffed animals to play with, and was a big Barbie fan.  I was also underfoot in the kitchen when my mother baked, which was just about every week.   When she trimmed the pie dough, she would give the remains to me and I would play that I was making little cookies, using the chairs as my oven, then eating the raw dough.   After awhile, my mom showed me how to make cinnamon and sugar cookies by rolling the excess dough into strips, adding cinnamon and sugar, rolling the strips and baking them.   In high school I took Home Economics, which was basically a class on cooking and meal presentation.   I remember the first meal I ever cooked at home was hamburgers, potatoes and vegetables, presented on a serving platter that I was very proud of.  My parents were supportive, encouraging and appreciative of that simple meal that I was so proud of.   After that, my mother would leave me in charge of dinner when she went to pick my father up from work in the evening.

My sister, who married when I was 8, taught me by example how to care for her babies and hired me as a baby-sitter by the time I was about 12 or 13.  Growing up, my favorite books were a series “Cherry Ames” about a nurse.  I read almost all of them, so in the summer between 8^th grade and high school, I volunteered to be a “candy striper”.  This was a hospital volunteer, who usually made beds, brought things to the wards on carts,  or did other non-skilled jobs to help the nurses.   Because my aunt was a XRay technician at a hospital, I volunteered to be there full time so I could ride back and forth from the hospital with my aunt.  As a result, they decided to use me as a receptionist in the hospital lab.  Although this summer activity made me realize I did not want to be a nurse after all, it opened my eyes to the many jobs that were out there and gave me a true respect for these hard working technicians.

My aunts and uncles also played a key role in my development.   The two aunts who were closest to me were single ladies who shared an apartment all their adult lives.  They were independent, working at city jobs during the week and helping out on the family farm on weekends.  My aunt and uncle who lived on the farm and ran it shared all the work.   I don’t think there was anything my uncle could do that my aunt couldn’t.  

The point is, my family gave me a very balanced view of the world, showing me that there were no limits in what I could learn or do, and that if I applied myself, the rewards would come.   I internalized their values and know that I have succeeded beyond anything they would have dreamed.   Thank you Mom, Dad, Brothers, Sister, Aunts, and Uncles.  I am who I am because of you.