Carpenter’s Column: I am great-aunt Mable

No children were allowed inside the Beatitudes Assisted Living facility. Consequently, when our family made the obligatory stop to visit great-aunt Mable during our annual visits to Phoenix, my siblings and I would wait outside while mom and dad visited with her. Mable Latham was my mother’s aunt, her mother’s sister.

My siblings and I waited near her ground-floor window. Dad would open the window and help her to a chair where she could sit and speak to us. Wearing a shawl and appearing to me so small and feeble, I thought the air conditioning might blow her out onto the lawn. She looked as ancient as a mummy.