Auntie Kelly's house was compact. In fact, she lived in a loft. Her house was always really loud and colorful.
Brightly painted extravagant picture frames held delicate memories or crude pop culture humor references and they danced across the wall of her living room. A red, violet, and orange paisley couch fell right below the collection of photographs and prints. And across the way, over a large wooden rectangular coffee table covered with magazines and candles, Auntie Kelly owned probably the biggest television I've ever seen. To a seven year old, the living room seemed almost like a movie theatre. White twinkling Christmas lights illuminated the room and wrapped around railings and banisters, loosely around the windows, and bordered a tapestry on the wall.

Three old bulldogs, Max, Georgia, and Gus, lay beside the coffee table on a brightly colored knotted throw-rug snorting. Her living room as well as the rest of her house always smelled sweet like warm vanilla.
Her kitchen was also small, but there was enough packed into it that the room seemed like an aisle of a grocery store. Auntie Kelly believed in experimenting and in figuring things out for yourself. She was known to have her experiments turn out spectacular, and they usually were our meals.

When we were small, we never realized that what she made was actually very healthy. She always looked out for my brother and I.

My brother and I would have to call Auntie Kelly on our own to get picked up because our mother especially was not willing to drive us over.

Our neighborhood growing up was almost always silent. It was filled with older people and our house was the only one with kids. A low rumble floated through the empty streets and through the screened in porch.
"She's here", my brother whispered as grins crept across our faces. Grabbing the purple and orange backpack that my little brother brought with him everywhere, we ran out the front door, let the screen door slap up against the frame, and darted up to her car. She drove a black 1998 Jeep Cherokee. She called her car Darcey, and Darcey took us all over on numerous adventures. We would end up going to garage sales, the movies, the carnival during the summer, pet shops, the mall, or where ever else we wanted to make a pit stop.

When we were small, none of my cousins or I could figure out why Auntie Kelly wasn't married or didn't have a boyfriend. She once dated a guy named Kenny but we only saw him twice.

She was thin, pretty, had long blonde hair, and she wasn't old or anything. She knew how to dress herself and was extremely patient and kind.

At pajama parties when we would watch girly movies, she would laugh or almost criticize some of the girl's actions about their boyfriends. How they would change themselves to act differently and try to do whatever they could to get the guy. Sometimes I didn't understand her humor. She told me multiple times that I shouldn't ever do what the girls in the movies were doing and that the boy wasn't worth it. She also told me that I could do whatever I wanted. I could do whatever the boys were doing. I shouldn't let them talk down to me, despite the fact that I was the oldest. It seemed strange at the time, but I listened.

I ended up growing up and her lessons stuck with me. My parents decided that my brother and I shouldn't be spending so much time with her and we didn't talk for a while. I suppose that with my conservative parents, they didn't want me being around someone with completely different ideals than them. She was outspoken and fought for the things that she wanted. She was someone who had taught herself to stick up for herself and led an alternative lifestyle.

I've seen my aunt only a handful of times after our parents telling us that we weren't allowed to go over to her house anymore or have her pick us up for the day. Always giving her tight ginormous hugs, I'd thank her for everything she taught me.

Growing up with one of the strongest and smartest women I've known, my Auntie Kelly, I feel almost like I was given a lot of prior knowledge that other girls wouldn't receive for years. I'm forever thankful.