Aunt Erma's Cope Book Read Online Free PDF

a way, I was filled with envy at the heroines . . . especially their zest for living. How my life paled by comparison. All my friends seemed to be moving on to new adventures. A lot of 'em had returned to work . . . some for the money, but most because they needed the rest. Some of my friends were returning to school and the rest of them were redecorating their empty nests with white shag and mirrors.
    Me? I was in a holding pattern. None of mine had abandoned the nest and there was no hope in sight.
    My daughter thought the red light on the stove was a hidden camera; my son led the life of a hamster; and my other son considered employment a fad like the hula hoop and mood rings.
    They were all at the awkward age.
    Too old for Dr. Dentons . . . too young for Dr. Scholl's.
    Too old for curfews . . . too young for me to go to sleep until they were home.
    Too old to advise . . . too young not to need it.
    Too old to wash dishes . . . too young to stop eating.
    Too old for an income tax exemption . . . too young for Medicare.
    I wish I could be like Mayva. She didn't care what her kids did as long as they had clean hands.
    It seemed like I had spent a lifetime giving, loving, and sharing. And you know what giving, loving, and sharing got me? It got me a drawer full of dirty pantyhose, a broken stereo, and a wet toothbrush every morning.
    It got me a camera with sand in it, a blouse that died from acute perspiration, a sleeping bag with a broken zipper, and a transistor radio that “suddenly went dead, Mom, when it hit the pavement.”
    Other women my age didn't have kids wandering in and out of their closets like a discount house.
    They borrowed my tennis racket, my car, my luggage, and my mouthwash. And my binoculars. I had almost forgotten about my binoculars. When I asked my son what happened to them he said, “They're in my room.”
    “Well, why don't you put them back where you got them?”
    “Why would you want to hang on to a pair of broken binoculars?”
    They were driving me crazy with their irregular hours, their slovenly habits, and their lack of responsibility around the house. Besides, they had reached the point where they had learned all of my adult expressions and were using them on me.
    “Are you going to clean your room today?” I asked.
    “We'll see.”
    “It worries me when you're out until all hours of the morning.”
    “Big people should not worry about little people. We can take care of ourselves.”
    "Well, I don't like it and I'm not going to put up with it.
    “Don't use that tone. You're just tired and crabby. Why don't you take a little nap and we'll talk about it when you wake up.”
    I had visions of my being the oldest living mother in North America with children at home. I'd be ninety-five and my daughter would be borrowing my last clean pair of SuppHose, my sons installing an automatic Genie door on the refrigerator . . . and every Mother's Day having them chip in and buy me another tooth.
    Wanda would have handled it differently. Wanda was the heroine in the book I was reading, Wanda's Cry of May Day. What a woman! One day she just marched out of a pillowcase bingo game and into a singles salad bar, where she ordered a spinach salad with bacon bits. Within three minutes she had struck up a relationship with a man with a tossed salad, bean sprouts, and Thousand Island dressing. She slept with him before their salads digested.
    The next day she got a job as vice president of a TV network and threw herself into her work. But she couldn't forget the tossed-salad-with-bean-sprouts-and-Thousand-Island-dressing encounter.
    She tried. She produced a documentary in Greece, a miniseries in Russia, and got her Ph.D. at nights. TS with BS and TI called her every day, but she knew what she wanted.
    Less than ninety-six pages later she married him, settled down, and on the last page was playing pillowcase bingo and for the first time in a long time felt good about herself.
    My husband and I were at the