- I never felt at home at home, but I always felt at home at Viv's.

My great aunt Vivian grew blueberries, tomatoes, roses, and Japanese maples in her garden at her house on Overlook Boulevard.

The inside of her house was chockfull of trinkets and artifacts from every corner of the world.

She'd been an art teacher for Portland City Schools for over 40 years, and the art that hung on her walls were mostly gifts from former students who had become artists in their own right, but much of the arts strewn about the house was their own.

Mobiles hung from the ceiling.

Sculptures and doodads appeared here and there.

Her oil paintings, watercolors and collages graced the walls and her stained glass creations sparkled against the windows.

Her house was bright and cheery, accented mostly with reds, oranges, and fuchsias.

Art books and kabuki dolls, African masks and glass fishing floats in cerulean blues and emerald greens, and every sort of knick-knack filled every nook and cranny.

Her home was like a museum.

She should have charged admission.

She lived to be 103, and this is what I know about her.

She loved art.

She was Finnish and spoke it fluently.

When she was a teacher, she got called into the principal's office one morning because another teacher saw her at a party smoking and talking to a man on a stairway un-chaperoned.

(audience laughing) After she retired, she volunteered at the Portland Art Museum and at a gift shop in the Chinese Gardens.

She was a world traveler and embraced all cultures.

She never married, although she was boy crazy until the end, she appreciated a good set of legs on a man.

(audience laughing) (audience cheering) She was a leg woman.

(audience laughing) She told me she was a virgin.

I believed her.

She was made to have a hysterectomy when she was in her 20s because she was an epileptic.

She kept it a secret for a very long time because she was so ashamed.

When her sister Lillian died of breast cancer, Viv raised her sister's two boys along with my great grandma Serafina, whom we called Aiti, which is Finnish for mother.

Vivian lived with her mother until Aiti died at the age of 88.

She made Mulligan stew a lot and always brought the leftovers to the neighbors, and they always thanked her, and then they later told me they usually dumped it out.

After all, how many times a week can you eat boiled meat, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and celery in a watery broth?

Well, if you'd asked Viv, that number would be seven.

Her other specialty was oatmeal, which she made every morning at 6:00 am.

And if you were staying there and you didn't come down for breakfast, she'd let you sleep in and bring it up to you on a tray at 6:30 (audience laughing) and chat with you until you finished it.

And as a teenager it was torture, but as I got older, I looked forward to it.

I mean, she was the only person who ever served me breakfast in bed.

She encouraged my love of Shakespeare and bought me his plays to read and took me to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the summers.

She taught me calligraphy.

And Viv was one of the reasons I had moved to Portland many years ago, yet I know I didn't visit her as often as I should have.

We get busy with our own lives.

We take people for granted that they will always be there, that there will be time later.

It's been 15 years since her passing.

I miss the house on Overlook Boulevard, but like the saying goes, "It's not the house that makes the home."

Thank you.

(audience applauding and cheering)