Aunt Julchen's four-leaf clover

Disclaimer: This is not a fictional story! :)

When I was about 8 years old, my mom’s wallet got stolen in a parking lot. I can still remember her crying, though not because of the money. My mom would have gladly given all that and more if it meant a special four-leaf clover, old and brittle and pressed between the leather compartments of her wallet, would come back to her.

My mother grew up in a huge and complicated family. Her mother had been adopted by her aunt and her aunt‘s younger brother when her biological mother learned that her husband had died in the war. The 40s were a rough time for everyone and since she already had four kids, my biological great-grandmother decided to let her youngest child grow up in the countryside. So, it came to be that my Ur-Oma adopted my grandma and raised her with the help of her younger brother and her parents. In that time and place, family was everything. Although my grandmother grew up without her biological parents, she was raised by a village of aunts and uncles, many not related by blood but certainly by heart.

Ur-Oma never felt the need to marry, since she already had a child to raise, a small company in her name, and a big house that hosted at least three generations at any given time. She had enough on her plate. A man could only be a nuisance.

Her sister Julchen, on the other hand, did marry, but she never had children. We don’t know whether she wanted any of her own, but she visited the house so often that it didn’t seem to make a difference. She helped in the company, took care of my grandmother and eventually of my mother and her sister. Julchen was my mother‘s favourite aunt; even if she was technically her great-aunt. She claims that the best compliment she has ever got was when my grandmother told her she „somehow must have got all that energy from Julchen, because you surely didn’t get it from me“. And so, I, too, grew up aspiring to be just like that: a woman that I didn’t have the pleasure to meet, but whom my family still carry in their hearts like a good-luck charm.

Because when my family tells me about Julchen, they smile. Julchen, they say, was a ray of sunshine. Laughing with all the air in her lungs and smiling with all of her crooked teeth and radiating enough happiness to keep the entire house warm. But Julchen was also fierce. When my grandparents cut down a tree in the garden that she was quite fond of, she accused them of being „tree-murderers! I’ll never visit you again!“.

She did visit again, eventually, but the tree remained a sore topic.

She also announced in the late 1930s that she wanted to visit Ethiopia. And so, Julchen started her journey, on foot, alone, until the war caught up to her when she tried to leave Italy. She stayed there for a bit, worked as a nurse, and spent the whole of her first paycheck on high heels. She left, however, when she heard about her brother having been taken prisoner in the war. So, she set out, on foot and alone, once again, to free him- and succeeded. We never quite figured out how she did it, because her brother never talked about the war, and she didn’t want to relive being shot at during their escape (even if none of the bullets found their mark).

Every time Julchen walked in the hills surrounding her home village, she would find a four-leaf clover. And every time, she would bring it home to gift it to her family or a friend.

When you get a four-leaf clover every other week, its value goes from „wow!“ to „whatever“ pretty quickly. And so, many of my relatives got rid of theirs as soon as they wilted, not bothering to press it, since Julchen would bring them another one soon, anyway.

But eventually, and contrary to everyone’s expectation, Julchen grew old.

My biological great-grandmother tapped her face 100 times every night to prevent wrinkles (and succeeded in looking like a porcelain doll until the very end).

My Ur-Oma insisted on having her hair and nails done every week (and succeeded in looking somewhat akin to Margaret Thatcher).

And Julchen did neither. She grew old proudly, vanity be damned. Her hair turned white and sparse, her parchment-like skin was wrinkled and she wore it all like trophies of a well-lived life. Even when dementia took away more than anyone would give freely, she walked around smiling and waving at everyone every day, still glowing with joy.

It was to be expected that Julchen would be a force to be reckoned with when placed in a nursing home. No one, however, expected her to tie together bedsheets and propose to her nursing home roommate they should leave the building via the window. Or to slip by any night shift nursing home employee for a brisk walk to the village. Late night searches for a frail old lady happily skipping stones by the river were getting rather common and night shift at the nursing home became even less popular. After four or five incidents, though, the nursing home came to the realisation that contacting her family every other day about their aunt's nightly adventures was becoming pointless.

My grandmother visited her regularly, as did the rest of the family. However confused Julchen may have become, one habit died hard: giving presents to friends and family. So, my grandmother received many things during her visits: Stones from the lake, dried flowers from the fields, and four-leaf clovers amass. All of which, I should note, could be found nowhere near the nursing home and all of which were handed out by Julchen with an expression of pure, mischievous glee. My grandmother caught on quicker than the rest of the family, but felt that pointing it out to them would make everyone at home worry too much. It would also make Julchen’s life a lot more boring. So she stayed silent and enjoyed the little trinkets she got.

When my mom visited Julchen for the last time, she also received a gift. A four-leaf clover, which she stuck into her wallet that day. Maybe she kept it because she felt it would be the last one. Maybe she just forgot to take it out. But Julchen passed away, and no one gave the family any more four-leaf clovers.

And when I was about 8 years old, that one precious four-leaf clover was stolen. So, I gave myself a mission. I would find a four-leaf clover and gift it to my mother. If an old, half-blind woman with dementia could find one, I could too, I guessed.

I guessed wrong. I am now 21 years old and have never found a four-leaf clover. It seems like Julchen took all of them with her when she passed away or plucked them all before she died and forgot to leave any of them for me to find.

Sometimes I wonder if she was simply more patient than me- but then again, I pride myself on being exactly that and have spent entire afternoons of my life in clover fields looking for one with four leaves instead of three. It's possible that she was just lucky. But a lucky streak of about 90 years invokes some sort of scepticism within my mathematics-loving mind.

But I am as determined now as I was 13 years ago. I will find a four-leaf clover and when I do, I know Julchen will smile down at me. And then I can gift it to my mother, so that she is reminded of her favourite aunt, who so fearlessly loved life and all it gave her.