While many close family relationships, e.g. with the parents or siblings, are surrounded by strong cultural norms and requirements, the relations with aunts seldom meet clear expectations (Ellingson & Sotirin 2010). Still, these relations can be of great value. My paper draws on interviews with my mother, reflecting on the profound importance of aunts in her childhood during the 1950-ies and 1960-ties in Poland. In her stories, she tells how different "aunts” (by birth, marriage or acquaintance) provided her and her family with practical and emotional support, profoundly enhancing the quality of life during the rather meagre early decades of early socialism in Poland. The aunts took care of each other's children on holidays, giving them an opportunity to widen their horizons, they provided more elegant clothes than those available in stores, they helped each other to organize social gatherings and festivities. The stories are a part of "family stories" and I reflect on how the relationships with aunts and the "socialistic times", which are an important background in the stories, are narrated and negotiated with me as a daughter.