Ever since I was a small child, I loved spending summers with Uncle Carl and Aunt Marilyn. Carl was by far my favorite of all my uncles (and I have quite a few); he was funny, generous, kind, and jovial. He always had time to play with all of us nephews and nieces, and he loved having us over at his house, joking around with us, watching movies of every sort with us, and even playing video games with us. He was simply a wonderful man, who would have been a wonderful father too, if he had only been blessed with children of his own.
Aunt Marilyn is much like her husband Carl was in character. She too is gentle and caring, always laughing or smiling about something, especially when Uncle Carl used to tease one of us kids (or her). She is an exceedingly tidy woman, perpetually cleaning house, or just cleaning something. And she loves to cook. I can't remember a single occasion, when I stayed in their house, that Aunt Marilyn did not ask me several times throughout the day if I was hungry or wanted something to eat. I am sincerely amazed that I did not swell in size during those summers, and I marvel at how Uncle Carl was able to keep his lean physique. Aunt Marilyn, however, is by no means an overweight woman herself; on the contrary, she is fairly trim in her figure, rather tall actually, yet not too skinny. But she is mind-bogglingly curvaceous in the best places — a goddess of the female form.
Unlike Uncle Carl, Auntie is seldom a jokester; in fact, she is really quite a stern lady. She keeps a spotless house, and she does not appreciate anyone trashing it. I recall one incident when I was young, and I came running into the house after playing ball outside, tracking dirt along the carpet as I sped toward the kitchen to grab a drink and a cookie. As soon as my muddy shoes hit the linoleum, I felt Aunt Marilyn's strong hand grab my arm and tug me over to the breakfast table, where she promptly pulled out an armless chair and sat down on it. While she tugged my jeans down to my ankles, she proceeded to scold me fiercely for not obeying the rules (again) about taking off my dirty shoes before coming into the house.
I can still remember, more clearly than anything, standing there in my tighty-whiteys, with Aunt Marilyn's fiery dark eyes glaring into me and her reprimanding finger shaking in my face, chiding me for my carelessness and informing me that I would now have to be spanked across her lap as a reminder. Before she had even bent me over her knees, I was already sobbing freely, partly because I dreaded spankings (particularly from her), but mostly because I hated being the source of any displeasure for my dear Aunt Marilyn. I have never doubted that she loves me very, very much, and it broke my heart to know that I had upset her in even the tiniest way.
Unplacated by my dripping tears, Aunt Marilyn reflexively straightened her apron, to make sure it covered her entire lap (because my older cousins sometimes had "accidents" on her thighs). Then she yanked me over her knees and began spanking the seat of my white briefs with her open hand. For five awful minutes, she held me fast in place, firmly spanking my reddening underwear-clad bottom, while I whimpered and cried and begged her forgiveness, promising to never break her rules again.
At the start of my punishment, I could hear my own mother in the living room, giggling and saying: "Uh oh! Sounds like Marilyn caught Bradley again! I sure hope that son of mine learns a real good lesson this time, for his own sake!"
Well, I certainly did learn my lesson. Every day after that, I always took off my shoes whenever I entered Uncle Carl and Aunt Marilyn's house. And I paid extra care to ensure that I did not make any other messes either.
Once my spanking was finished, Aunt Marilyn kept me sprawled over her knees, lecturing me further about proper behavior for a young man. And I swore and swore again that I would obey her and be a good boy for her so long as I lived. Appeased by my answer and my obvious contrition, she sat me up on her lap and hugged me tightly in her arms, kissing my cheeks and telling me how much she loved me, while my bawling gradually ceased.
As Uncle Carl was my favorite uncle, so too is Aunt Marilyn my favorite aunt. I love her like a second mother, for that is exactly what she has always been to me. I know she loves me equally with all my cousins, but I think, sometimes, she looks at me like her own surrogate son, since I have always been around more than all the other kids.
I was in my late teens when Uncle Carl was diagnosed with cancer, and within just a year (a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday), he was gone. I was utterly broken by that loss, as I know Auntie was too. Yet I didn't know how to comfort her, since I had as much difficulty coming to terms with my own grief.
I graduated high school that next month, and even before I had my diploma in my hands, my Mom was constantly talking to me about colleges. I already knew her preference was the university near Aunt Marilyn's home, and my Mom can be very persuasive about such things (usually threatening me with a variety of severe spankings if I even pretend to ignore her wishes or guidance). So I quickly relented to Mom's desires, as I always do.
Ours is a simple family, and it is sort of an old custom with us that, when a woman loses her husband, one of her children or another close relative moves in with her to help ease her sorrow and inevitable loneliness. Unfortunately, Aunt Marilyn has no children of her own, and most of my cousins were either in school or too busy with jobs and life in general to spend a lot of time with her. I understood, without it being said, that this was a large part of the reason why my Mom wanted me to attend the college near Aunt Marilyn's home, so that I could also move in with her and be a comfort to her. (Mom often muses over how much Aunt Marilyn dotes on me.)
Mere days after graduating high school, I moved into Aunt Marilyn's house, taking the spare bedroom that was usually set aside for me anyway. She greeted me at the door, wrapping me in an enormous hug, till I thought she was going to smother me between her huge, soft breasts. She kept telling me how happy she was that I had come to live with her, and she would not stop smiling. We brought my few boxes of stuff into my room, and while she helped me unpack, she rambled cheerfully about all the things we could do over the summer and how much fun we would have. I tried to be as gleeful as she was, but it was hard for me to seem anything more than glum, being here, knowing that I would never again see my beloved uncle sitting in his recliner or strumming his old guitar in his "book room".
Aunt Marilyn is truly a stouthearted woman; no one can deny that. But I am not as strong as she is.
Those first few days, we did spend a lot of time together, going on hikes or just watching movies and eating. She dragged me along with her to the mall when she wanted to go shopping, and I regularly found myself helping her in the kitchen or moving furniture for her when she was cleaning. She habitually inquired about what college courses I would be taking and what plans I had for my future (and I never had any answers to that last question). I knew from experience that she was reporting everything I said and did back to my Mom, so I tried to be as amiable and amenable as possible.
But the worst days were when Aunt Marilyn wanted me to help her sort through all my uncle's old things — what to keep, what to get rid of, and what should be given away to family members. I struggled through this, striving to be as supportive as I could, but afterward, I needed more and more time away.
I had a few friends in the area, and whenever I could, I would slip away from Aunt Marilyn and go hang out with my friends, forgetting my own heartache for a couple of hours. But I always felt guilty when I came home to Auntie, because her disapproving scowl told me that she did not appreciate me vanishing without notice. Yet she did not say anything about it, at first, perhaps because she was afraid she might drive me away, though her tone did grow a little sterner. I was able to kill my guilt by telling myself over and over again that I was a man now, and I could do whatever I wanted.
In wiser retrospect, I can admit that I was really being nothing more than a petulant child. And that is precisely how Aunt Marilyn viewed me too.
On one particular evening, having suffered all that afternoon with mournful reminiscences of my beloved Uncle Carl, I quietly left Aunt Marilyn's house, without saying a word to her, and I walked a few blocks over to see my friend Tom. To my great delight, Tom had procured some tequila for a nearby party, and I eagerly went with him. I can scarcely remember much else of that night, aside from the fact that I drank myself silly, made out with at least one girl, whose name I have ever-after failed to recall, and once the cops showed up, Tom and I ran frantically through the back-alleys of that neighborhood and the next till we were practically sober again. Before the sun rose that morning, Tom and I crashed at his place, and I woke up around noon with a horrendous headache.
It was a Sunday morning, and Tom's parents were away at church, but he found a note from his mom stamped on his door, informing him that she knew full well what her son had been up to all night, and that he should be waiting in his room when she got home, because he was due for a long and serious "discussion" with her hairbrush. He and I both knew what that meant. At the end of the note was a postscript for me, saying that Tom's mother had also taken the liberty of calling my Aunt Marilyn to let her know where I was and why I had not returned home last night. The words, "You had better get home straightaway, if you know what's good for you, Bradley!" stuck out at me the most.
I imagine my face turned as pale as Tom's after reading that note, and I knew I shouldn't stay another minute. I bade farewell to Tom, telling him that I would come back Monday to make sure he was still alive, and he said he would do the same for me if I did not show up.
That short walk back to Aunt Marilyn's house was probably the longest and scariest of my life. I didn't want to believe that my dear Auntie might do to me what Tom's mother had promised to do to him. I was a man now, after all; I was too old for a spanking — wasn't I? At that moment, I reminded myself that this was Aunt Marilyn I was talking about. To her, there is no age limit for spanking unruly children.
I remember audibly gulping at that thought.
Silently I crept into the house, stealthily removing my shoes as I did. I slowly started toward the hallway, hoping I could attain the safety of my room before I was spotted. But as I tiptoed past the living room, there was Aunt Marilyn, sitting fretfully on the sofa, with her arms crossed forebodingly over her ample chest, just waiting to apprehend me as I set foot over the threshold. She had caught me again, as Mom would have said.
"Bradley Garrett! Do you have any idea what you put me through last night?!" Aunt Marilyn demanded as soon as she saw me, freezing me in place by the very mention of my first and middle names, my head hanging in shame. "I cried my eyes out when you disappeared yesterday and didn't come back. I had no clue where you were or what had happened to you, if you were ever coming home again. You didn't answer your phone." (I had accidentally turned off my phone and not realized it.) "I called your Mommy, and she didn't know where you were either." (She had called my Mom. Now my head really hurt.) "I was about to contact the police when Mrs. Hensley called me and told me that you and Tom had just waltzed into her house and passed out in his room. You can't imagine my relief when I heard that, and how much I cried again because of it. Well, I called your Mommy back to tell her that you're all right, and I promised her that this sort of thing is never going to happen again."
I trembled visibly at those simple words, comprehending exactly what Aunt Marilyn meant by them. "Please, Auntie!" I begged pitifully, surprising myself by how childish I sounded. "I'm sorry about last night. It was all a huge mistake, and it won't ever happen again. I swear it won't."
