Moping round

Please forgive Pretty Lady's less-than-perky demeanor this evening. Her Glamorous Aunt has just been diagnosed with a rather nasty form of cancer, and she received the news today. Odd that something compelled her to take Grace and Grit off the shelf yesterday evening, and begin a thorough re-read. For those of grounded spiritual constitutions, Pretty Lady highly recommends the book, although when her former roommate's sister was diagnosed with lymphoma, this same roommate took serious umbrage to the notion that any work of psychospiritual philosophy without a Pollyanna ending could contain any seeds of comfort.

In any case, Pretty Lady is proud to report that her Glamorous Aunt is a graceful lady indeed. When Pretty Lady telephoned her in the hospital, to say "I am devastated," her Glamorous Aunt replied, "Yes, it is devastating, for everyone but me. I'm just going along." We then proceeded to have a sprightly conversation about the relative merits of marijuana versus diet pills, for both social and medicinal purposes, and the aesthetic philosophies of wigs versus turbans, with an amusing foray into the head-shaving habits of Hasidic married ladies.

Pretty Lady's parents are rather straitlaced; it is good to have a Glamorous Aunt around, for letting one's hair down.

In fact, this was the very weekend that Pretty Lady and her Glamorous Aunt were to have gone millionaire-hunting in Long Island, before this tiresome diagnosis intervened. Pretty Lady's Aunt's charm is ageless, of course, and she had arranged for a promising Harvard Lawyer to squire the two of us to the theatre, and a notable French restaurant or two. Pretty Lady kept her weekend free for this purpose--and now she is glad of the moping time.

Thank fortune that there is to be a Family Reunion of the half of the family that Pretty Lady takes after, in three weeks' time. She already has her ticket. She looks forward to much drama and gossiping, at her Aunt's bedside, in company with her glamorous cousins, great-aunts, uncles and second cousins once removed. One can imagine that when Pretty Lady's family gets together, we are a riot.