Get your purse and get in the car

At one time, I aspired to be a trophy wife. The kind of lady who walks on the red carpet arm-in-arm with her husband. Looking at least 20 years younger. Smiling for the camera. Wearing the latest gorgeous fashion with matching jewels.

Now, I think I just wanna be Nanny.

Nanny had a housekeeper six days a week -- and on Christmas. Most days, after she awakened and made her bed, Nanny spent time in the yard raking pine straw into piles. She would tour her monstrous back yard with her grandchildren -- identifying blooming bridal wreath and grape-like wisteria and poisonous tung apple trees.

Unexpectedly, I find myself doing similar things: looking for new blooms on the Gerber daisies, moving the sprinkler around to revive the withering lantana, pinching the tops off the basil.

Nanny had a great old Hollywood name, Doris. When it was too hot to putter in the yard, she would can figs from the tree out back, paint her nails in the palest of pinks or write in her diary about the happenings of the day.

Nanny was great at telling stories about the tramps who visited her house during the Depression or the way Eve (and consequently every other female) got punished with painful childbearing for tempting Adam with the apple. She let us wear her pop beads and climb her magnolia tree.

About mid-afternoon, when housework and yard work were done, Nanny would go in for a bath.

She took her own sweet time about things. If she wanted a "Co-cola" float in the afternoon, she would have one. If she wanted to watch Art Linkletter or Lawrence Welk, better just enjoy the Lennon sisters and "Kids Say the Darndest Things." If she offered you pistachio pudding when the older cousins from Florence dropped by, you might as well get a spoon.

She just wouldn't get in a hurry.

Now that's a lifestyle I could get comfortable with.