My mother, who was not a well woman and neither particularly successful as a homemaker or a parent, had a penchant for avoiding housework as much as possible. Between 1965 and 1968, whenever I was home from college, she would usually plan the weekend when I was to return to college to be out of town - my father's mother in Kentucky, her sister Lois in Columbus - so she had an excuse to do nothing to help me get ready to go back to school. My warmest memories, sadly, are of my Aunt Jenny coming over to wash all my accumulated laundry and to iron my shirts and trousers so I could go back to school. She never said a word about the fact that my mother was a lazy, narcissistic shit, and she always had the excuse that she knew by the time my parents got back, I had to leave and I couldn't leave unprepared. Her death tears my heart out that I now can never tell her how much I appreciated and loved her for doing that.
On a funny side, when she and my mother and the neighbor Jean were on a bowling team, Jenny was practicing her swing one day at home and put a huge hole in the living room wall. She was also a voracious hearts player and on weekends when I was home from college, she, my mother, my cousins, and I would play hearts for hours. I will miss her.
