I last saw her when I was very small; I really don't know my great-aunt Pearlie very well.  To me she is nothing more than a stranger my parents talk about sometimes.

Great-Aunt Pearlie is very old:  she is something like in her nineties.  She lives in a nursing home with other elderly or disabled residents.  The only reason she is there in the first place is she broke her hip while attempting to do the tango with an elderly gentleman while on a cruise to Alaska last month.

Up until she broke her hip, Pearlie was a go-getter.  Never mind that she is well into her nineties.  She is the type of person to do outlandish stunts, like go skydiving on her ninetieth birthday.  Or go to Africa to visit the cheetahs "up close and personal" when she was seventy-five.  Or, as another example, dance the hula at age eighty with "kids" well half her age and keep going after an hour, with no sign of exhaustion setting in.

The craziest thing Aunt Pearlie Broussard ever did?  Enter an iron-man competition at the age of eighty-five.  (She came in last place, but by God, she finished!)

Now she sits in a wheelchair, looking out the window, wondering when she "can get out of jail" (the nursing home), so she can get back to livin' a full life, as only she can.

We saw her yesterday (Sunday).  She was as cantankerous and as fiesty as ever.  All the time we were there she railed about the horrible food residents were forced to eat (she was craving an ice cold beer and a mound of Cajun boiled crawfish!), and she would have rather been dancing the Cajun two-step to Belton Richard than sitting around a table knitting or hearing other "oldsters" talk about their health problems or who died.

Great-Aunt Pearlie is of pure Cajun stock, speaking in a heavy, French-accented voice.  She may be ninety six now, yet she looks no older than sixty-five.  She has inky-black hair shot through with grey, snapping dark eyes that burn with the fire of life, and hardly has any wrinkles on her face (my dad has more wrinkles than she does!  LOL). 

Great-Aunt Pearlie is a tiny bird of a woman:  she is less than 4'7" tall and weighs maybe 75-80 pounds soaking wet.  Which makes her feats of grandiose adventures even more astounding.

I have met Pearlie maybe once or twice before; I really don't remember her; I think I last saw her when I was like four or something.  (I'm now thirteen.)  When she saw me, her face lit up like a Christmas tree and she remarked how big I'd gotten.  (Well, why shouldn't I?  I'm a teenager now, no longer a little kid!)  She gave me a hug that nearly crushed my ribs, and handed me a package and said she was saving it for me when I would come see her.

I opened it up.  It was a huge, pink teddy bear with a bright-scarlet bow around its neck. 

I groaned. 

I guess my mom could see the disappointment in my face.  Mom told me to laugh it off and accept the gift anyway; she was only looking out for my best interest.

Yeah, right.  A teddybear??  A fat, pink, fuzzy teddybear??

I could give the bear to my little sister, and I'd be happy.  I was more in the line of a football, or, perhaps, a hot video game!

Great-Aunt Pearlie had been saving it all these years, she told mom.

Guess I should have seen her more often instead of begging off, making excuses to see my friends or feign being sick in bed with malaria or some other bizarre, ghastly illness.

Anyway, we had a good visit with Great-Aunt Pearlie, even with the teddy bear. The bear was kind of cute, in a little-kid sort of way.  I think I could learn to love "Chumley", but only as long as my friends don't know about it.

If they saw me with it, I'd be laughed clear out of the country!