Lunacy Tunes

Everyone but dad cheered after reading the postscript of mom’s letter. At the tender age of 65, the woman had finally reached the end of her rope.

“Today, I am done with doing housework for that ungrateful man. You can all now consider me officially retired.”

She then ripped the neatly-sandwiched batch of paper-and-carbon sheets out of the typewriter so she could scribble her signature across the bottom. Then she changed her mind and reinserting the whole thing once again, just to add one more dramatic sentence.

You could tell what she had done because the last line slanted oddly.

“Oh, and I went down and signed up for nursing classes today.”

She had, too. And she went on to complete the entire course, as well as finish near the top of her class.

Good for you, mom! Way to go!

Then, to properly celebrate, one of my crazy sisters decided it would be nice to reward the dear woman by inviting her along for a week-long holiday down at Cancun in Mexico. How nice.

(I say crazy for good cause. It makes no sense to invite my mother any place where booze tends to flow freely.)

I am only surprised that she did not bring back a new boy-friend at the end of the trip, or maybe she tried to but the crazy sister suddenly became wise and more-demanding -- no one in the family will talk much about that.

I do know, however, that late one night and on one of the star-lit, pristine beaches of the Spanish Main, my liberated mother not only entered but took home second-prize in a wet tee-shirt contest.

My mom. My dad. My sister. My family.