Cupping my hands on the sides of my face, I’d press my nose against the bowed screen door and peer into the dark room.

"Come on in," Aunt Mabel would call in her raspy voice, as she slowly rolled her heavy body upright on the sagging, threadbare couch, and slipped her bare feet into worn rubber thongs. Carrot-colored strands of hair streaked with gray cascaded across her generous bosom.

Pulling me close with pale, fleshy arms cinched in the sleeves of a red and yellow muu-muu, she would plant a squeaky kiss on my cheek. Then through a gravelly chuckle, she would mumble an apology in Mom’s direction for not having tidied up before we arrived.

"I just couldn’t get started this morning," she would say. Fact is, she never got started. A thick layer of dust covered the plastic flower arrangement atop the TV/stereo cabinet, and the collection of movie magazines, creased open to half-read articles. The sweet smell of bacon hung in the air and mingled with the stale odor of soiled carpet and yesterday’s trash.

Mabel’s first four children were all aspiring make-up artists, their skills honed from years of applying various shades of blue eye shadow, black liner and mascara, pasty facial powder, and pink carnation blush each morning before school. When they returned home in the afternoon, they could count on her being there, curled up on the couch, half-listening to the drone of a soap opera.

Lisa, the last girl, chubby and warm, toddled around barefoot in a faded outgrown cotton print dress, and dingy, hand-me-down panties. Her curly chestnut hair and brown skin, in stark contrast to that of her blonde, fair-skinned sisters, exposed her mixed ethnic background. Her father was Samoan, we were told, though she shared her siblings’ surname, and she called their father, "Daddy."

The three eldest of Mabel’s children, Sonya, Paulette and Diane, formed a singing group in the 70's and performed at a number of local country-western clubs. All their costumes were sewn by their mother, without dress patterns, on an old sewing machine she had set up in the kitchen.

They cut a record once, "How Much, How Many", a tale of love lost. It was written by Aunt Mabel.

Over the years, battered hopes and broken marriages brought the girls home to their mother from time to time. It seemed Aunt Mabel was never without a household of offspring, and their offspring.

Aunt Mabel bore one more child in her mid-forties, her only son, Warren, before Mother Nature mercifully imposed her fool-proof method of birth control. Warren lived with his mother until she died, at first for her support, then later to care for her.

Sometime back, while sorting through a box of old photos, I came across a portrait of myself as a grinning, dimpled two-year-old. Printed in soft sepia, it had been brought to life by the feathering of subtle shades of gold, blue and pink into the hair, eyes, cheeks, and clothing. I remember being told that Aunt Mabel earned a salary at this for a time in her life.

Aunt Mabel’s death didn’t make the six o’clock news. She left no mark on the world. Her quiet legacy is only the portraits she endowed with a soul, and the love with which she enriched the lives of those lucky enough to be a part of hers.