120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

#Watt-a-Decade#JustWriteDay: The Birthday Party

Aurora Skye's 102th birthday was coming up. Yet the only person at the old lady's care home who wasn't excited about her upcoming birthday party was Aurora Skye. 

As a matter of fact, if you had asked her if she had actually wanted to celebrate the party, the very old, but frail lady would have said no. She didn't even like to talk about her age as she was a retired actress/singer and had lied about it since 1945 when she had turned 27, which was considered the threshold to old age for any female performer in those days.   

Aurora had been born Adele Metzger in Wisconsin on December 24, 1918, only a few weeks after the end of the war that was then known as the "Great War" and during pandemic that would become known as the Spanish flu. One of her father's brothers had died in France in October 1918, shortly before the war had ended. Her maternal grandparents both died of the flu in the winter of 1918/19. 

Death continued to play an important role in Aurora's life as her father, who was the manager of a local department store and had invested all his savings in the stock market, took his own life when the stock market crashed in 1929. Her heartbroken mother thought they needed a change of climate after that and moved them to the magical land of dreams also known as California. 

Aurora got a few parts in school plays because she could act and sing considerably well and also happened to be good-looking. But her life remained unremarkable in the next couple of years as she married her high school sweetheart Bob shortly after their graduation in 1936 and had two children, Clark and Jean, with him. 

At 26, Aurora became a widow and single mother when her husband died in France. In order to support her children, she decided to become an actress and singer and took on every part she could get. For the next five decades, she was busy enough to be able to support her family even though that meant her children were raised by her neighbors more than by herself. The one thing she strove for, like every performer, her big break, somehow never came along in spite of the new, marquee-ready name she gave herself upon entering show business. She got close to landing a breakthrough role only once in 1968, but she never made it to the audition because she was just getting ready for it when she learned of her son's death in Vietnam.

Aurora retired from acting and singing at 78 and moved into a care home in 2012 because she was estranged from her daughter's family.

When she was told a reporter from a local newspaper wanted to interview her in December 2020, Aurora turned him down. She said didn't want to be famous because she had lived so long and asked through her face mask: "What kind of an achievement is that?"