Aunt Esther and Her Elaborate Sleeves

While having lunch with my mother she reminisced about her Aunt Esther, the glamor girl of the family through Grandpa Moline’s side of the house. She was also the eccentric, or in modern jargon, the kook. She was an artist and she was weird. She would not put her foot on a third step going up or down stairs. She counted, “One, two,” and hopped to the fourth. She refused to use the word red, and, seeing me as a baby, she described my hair as lurid.

Aunt Esther wore beautiful clothes which she designed and made herself. She traveled in rather high society in Chicago, graced some events in the Potter Palmer mansion, and shocked the traditionalists with extreme fashions. One feature was never altered, however. She always wore long sleeves which extended over her fingers, resembling half-gloves, with the ends of the sleeves exotically scalloped and jeweled. Her appearance at the top of an old-fashioned staircase, sweeping downward gracefully with a great banister, gave the socially-in a gasp of surprise and admiration. They gossiped her exploits in the carriages on the way home and poisoned her style while sipping tea in the drawing room the next day. Then they called their dressmakers and demanded something more daring than Esther Moline would wear.

Those long sleeves with the elaborately decorated half-glove effect were her invention by necessity. Aunt Esther suffered from what was then called rheumatism. She had greatly swollen, red knuckles. She was too proud to display her misshapen hands and too artistic to suffer the indignities of a bandage. Therefore, she covered the unsightly knuckles with careful stitching, brilliant beads, and intricate design.

The application is twofold. One ready-made interpretation is that people try to cover up the truth about themselves. But a more subtle and stronger application lies in provoking sympathy for Aunt Esther. We all have sympathy for the odd characters in other people’s family trees. It is our own kith-and-kin cranks that are hard to bear. The Word admonishes that we should care for and shield each other. We are all baptized by one Spirit into the body of Christ. Swollen knuckles are not uncommon. Cover them! If we deal harshly with our fellow Christians we may miss the opportunity God has given us to cover a multitude of sins rather than to expose them for the amusement of the unbelieving world.