Zorro's Nana

Little Clara Wembley, two years old, realizing that she had made quite a hit, with Jenny Newland's help, by questioning the identity of Jesus' nana, has had the provenance of nanas on her mind. Thus when she saw Claire Nathan in the Gopher IGA, dressed all in black, she pointed and shrilled out, "Is that Zorro's nana?"

Claire froze into a statue. It didn't help. Everyone looked. Claire had just bopped into the Gopher for some popcorn salt so that her husband, Randall, would eat popcorn instead of peanut brittle for his evening snack, which usually stetches from immediately after supper to immediately before bedtime, and sometimes beyond. She hates it when he dashes, or what passes for dashing in him, toward the bed, with a cookie in each hand, shouting "To infinity and beyond..."

She usually doesn't go anywhere in her workout clothes, except to "Lumps." Claire doesn't have a girlish figure anymore, but her workout clothes have to be too tight to keep them from getting caught in the machines. Since "Lumps" is an all women's gym, run by 94 year old Bertha Biggs, who is convinced that women today are pampered, the workout machines are old-fashioned washer wringers to turn, and stove lids to hoist, buckets of coal and water to carry in and out of the gym, and rubber cow udders to squeeze to improve hand strength.

Kate Bates, little Clara's own nana, made things worse by saying, "Now Clara, you know that's not Zorro's nana. That's Rev. Nathan's wife."

Claire spend 30 years teaching in an inner-city school, so she's inclined to make the best of things. Randall Nathan thinks his wife has finally hit dimentia, though, because when she arrived home from the Gopher, in the middle of a snow storm, she dug into the closet and got out the poncho and sombrero and gaucho pants from their NM vacation and was still wearing them at supper time.

That was when she put a plate of beans and burritos in front of him and shouted, "My sword is a flame to right every wrong, so heed my nana."