Aunt Mabel

My aunt Mabel was perfect! At least that's what I thought when I was a young child. I wanted to grow up to be just like her.
I think I almost worshipped her sometimes.

She was the secretary to the dean of our local junior college. She had gone to a business school in a bigger city, and she really knew her stuff. I remember seeing the college yearbook from the 1930's where she was photographed with the dean and the caption read "The Owl and the Pussy Cat". Mabel was the pussy cat.

Mabel knew how to dress. Big white hats, white collars on dark clothes. Stunning! She was usually smiling her pretty dimpled smile, just making you feel good. Mabel seemed to like having a six-pack near by, but I never saw her acting ridiculous! She was always the perfect lady. Much like my sister, the school teacher, was. It just wasn't in me, though, to be the perfect lady.

I felt so honored one day when I was about nine, and Mabel was sitting in an easy chair and her leg fell asleep. She asked me if I would rub her leg and get the circulation going again. So I knelt at her feet and did the best job I knew how. Finally, I could do something nice for Mabel! She was always doing something for me.

Mabel finally met the man of her dreams, Henry. Henry lived in Michigan, so Mabel moved to Michigan where they got married and lived on Henry's brother's farm. Mabel was now a secretary to one of the executives of the Pontiac Motor Company. One day Mabel and Henry decided to go farming in Southern Minnesota, just vegetables, no cows, maybe chickens. On the automobile ride to
Minnesota, Henry suddenly took sick and died. So Mabel went back to live in Michigan. She came to Minnesota and visited us once in awhile, but then she met Bob a widower with grown children and she married again and lived in Michigan. Later, she and Bob went to Turkey, of all places, to live where Bob taught people the ropes in the Turkish Steel mills. She came back and gave me a present from Turkey!

Well, that was just like Mabel, my dear aunt. Mabel and Bob spent their retirement years in Clearwater, Florida until Mabel had a losing struggle with Parkinson's disease and died in a nursing home in Michigan.

Rest in peace, dear Aunt Mabel.