Barbara Falconer Newhall

Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.

Here Comes Another Year!

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here comes another year -- a-2024-calendar
Here comes another year. This time it’s 2024. Photo by Barbara Newhall

Watch out! Here comes another year.

The years, they just keep on coming. Ogden Nash once put it this way:

The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!

Some of us have collected up a lot of years. Eighty-two in my case.

My Aunt Grace had even more years than that under her belt by the time she was done with this planet, 98 all told. I wrote this piece about her back in 2013, not long after she died. Her name was Grace, but I thought of her as my Aunt Glamorous.

How to Be a Glamorous Gal at Age 98

Main Street, Scottville, Michigan, from the south
My Aunt Glamorous came from this small country town in the Midwest.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall — February 2, 2013

The last of my aunts and uncles died two weeks ago at the age of 98, but not before passing on some last minute womanly advice to me.

My aunt – I think of her as my Aunt Glamorous – was tall, red-headed, blue-eyed, self-sufficient and cosmopolitan at a time and place when most women in her hometown wanted nothing more than to get married, have babies and put up green beans and blackberry jam.

Glamorous red head born in 1914 who used Vaseline as facial moisturizer
Aunt Glamorous

Aunt Glamorous was born in a small country town in the Midwest.  Actually, she was born in a farmhouse a couple miles outside a small country town in the Midwest.

My aunt was not long for the farm town life, however. She was made of shinier stuff. She was meant to be a woman of the world. She got herself a job in retailing, saved up a few thousand dollars and opened a dress shop half way across the state.

By the time I was teenager, my Aunt Glamorous was making regular buying trips to New York’s garment district, and my mother and I were making regular trips to her store to shop wholesale for dresses and girdles and gloves.

My Aunt Glamorous had no children. But she had a wardrobe. She had shoes. She had handbags. She had cigarette lighters and big, clunky jewelry. She had gourmet cookbooks and good-looking husbands. And right up to the end of her life she had a soft, pink, girlish complexion.

I learned a lot from my Aunt Glamorous over the years. Some of it was advice delivered directly to me in plain words. Other advice I inferred from the shrewd way she pursued her career and the equally shrewd way my twice-widowed aunt chose her husbands: Successful businessmen who admired her as much as they loved her.

I’ll share with you some of my aunt’s pithier tips on how to be a sexy lady — or gal, as she would put it —  at any age.

Gal Wisdom from My Aunt Glamorous

  • Put away those housewifey aprons with the rumply bibs that cover up one of a gal’s finest assets – her bust.  When entertaining, forgo the apron altogether. You’re not the maid. You’re the hostess. Take yourself seriously.
  • Wear a girdle to hold up your nylons, not to rearrange your figure. You’re a gorgeous gal. Believe it.
  • A gal feels the same at 50 as she does at 25 – sexy and fun-loving. Don’t get old until you have to. (My Aunt Glamorous did get old. She was pushing 100 when she died, but her eyes were still blue and her hair was still red, the latter thanks to a weekly visit from her hairdresser. She received guests – nieces and nephews who flew in from around the country – in sweeping caftans. If she used a cane, it was a pretty one that matched her outfit.)
  • A surprising piece of beauty wisdom came to me via one of the caretakers who saw my aunt through the last days of her life. Apparently, decade after decade, while I was spending $10, $30 and most recently $60 on jar of face cream, my clear-skinned, red-headed aunt was using the same moisturizer she’d used as a farm girl – Vaseline.
  • Another bit of womanly advice was delivered to me a few days before my Aunt Glamorous died. By then she couldn’t say more than a few words, but she could smile. As I said good-bye for the last time, I made the excuse that it was time for me to get on a plane and head home; my husband would be missing me.

At the mention of husbands, my aunt smiled her mischievous, woman-of-the-world smile. Husbands are the cat’s pajamas, I could hear her saying. Pamper them. Love them. Flirt with them. They’re worth it.

My aunt fled the small town life as a young woman. But as the decades added up, she made careful plans to return. As soon as the ground thawed, her body would be buried in a cemetery a couple miles outside a small country town in the Midwest.

Note: My Aunt Glamorous was Grace Falconer Perlmutter Kleis. She was born near Scottville, Michigan, and had dress shops in Coldwater and Jackson, Michigan. She was married to Ephraim Perlmutter. After he died, she married Harold Kleis.

here comes another year path-through-snow
Here comes another year. It’s right around the bend. Photo by Barbara Newhall

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I wish I had had more time with (Great) Aunt Grace. She made a big impression on me too! Fun to read her advice there. Thanks for sharing, Aunt Barb!

    Reply

  2. One of your BEST stories, Barb! What a wonderful model to have influence your life — way ahead of her time through that independent streak some of us have deep within us. Her clear-headed honesty is so refreshing — in an era when my mother thoughts ‘breasts’ were unmentionables. I had to ask what ‘sanitary napkins’ were, not because I didn’t know through my friends but as my way to force her to talk about them and their use! A lucky girl you were!

    Reply

    • As a kid, I was aware that my Aunt Grace was very different from my mother (who was a lot like yours). But I probably didn’t realize what a profound effect she and some of the other women on my father’s side of the family were having on me and my idea of what a woman could do.

      Reply

  3. I have a funny memory of your aunt. My brother David was in Ann Arbor the summer of 1969 (just before Rich and I married) – and so was I. He phoned to share an unexpected call from Aunt Grace. She began the call with a scold, “David, why haven’t you been in touch.” David replied, “I don’t have an aunt Grace. You must have called the wrong number.” She, “This isn’t David Falconer?” David knew I had a good friend with that last name and called me to see if you had a brother in town. What an amazing coincidence!

    Reply

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