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Aunt Coca’s Ghost

URL: http://www.jewishjournal.com/singles/article/aunt_cocas_ghost_20030404

Did you have an Aunt Coca? My auntie, to whom I am not genetically connected, was a lady we kindly invited to family gatherings because she was alone. It was silently understood that she was an "old maid," one of those unfortunate women who did not marry and have children. My Aunt Coca, from my child perspective, was an "old" woman. A distinguished blonde lady, a member of the adult clan who clumsily pinched my cheeks and brought gifts. What seemed old then, is close to home now. Like her, I am an unmarried, 40-year-old woman, and I sometimes painfully feel the same loneliness and single-woman stigmas as she did.

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