It was a long-standing joke in my family that Aunt Mimi, my mother’s youngest sister, looked like Queen Elizabeth II. Even at an early age, she strongly resembled the queen. She loved to wear hats, wore gloves long after most ladies abandoned them, and had a pocketbook for every occasion— all adding to her queen-like persona. Mimi, however, failed to see the resemblance; or, if she did, she just wouldn’t admit it.
In the fall of 2002, for her 80th birthday, Mimi and I took a trip to Alaska, and along the way, we stopped in Victoria, British Columbia. Mimi wanted to stay overnight and have tea at the Empress Hotel, where she and my mother had visited many years earlier. On our first night in Victoria, as we walked to dinner along the inner harbor, a street performer in full Elizabethan costume rushed up to Aunt Mimi and bowed before her, à la Sir Walter Raleigh, exalting, “My queen, my queen.” Well, Mimi thought we were about to get mugged and clutched her pocketbook even tighter than before. The next day, in one of the shops that sold heraldry china associated with the royal family, an older lady about Mimi’s age also commented on her resemblance to QE II. Once again, Queen Mimi was not amused.
