First off, let me apologize for being a bit late with this month's letter. It's been a rather hectic month and it's taken me a bit of time to collect my thoughts. Nursing Dee and Mike through a nasty bout of rotavirus wasn't fun, to say the least. What made it a bit trickier is that now that they've adjusted to the new order, the old resentments have started to resurface a little. You see, Mike means well and tries to do his best but tends to forget how suggestable Robin can be. Not only did he shove a wad of duct tape up his nose after watching Wilf channel Reg Green, he gave Edgar a Mohawk and tried to feed Butterscotch to him after Mike reminisced a little. Granted, he wanted to tell Robbie that those were both bad ideas but he was pre-empted. Oh, well. Sooner or later, he'll figure out that he should have been a bit hazier about his past. He shouldn't get too hazy, though. He has one advantage that Deanna lacks; he remembers it fairly accurately. After her accident, the neurologist warned Wilf and me that there were a few gaps in her memory. The crash didn't affect her cognitive skills to any extent but it did leave her with a case of mild retrograde amnesia. She knows who the people around her are but she doesn't remember certain periods in her life in any great detail. For instance, she honestly thinks that we moved to Burlington in 1980 instead of 1986 because Elly told her that before September of last year. Mike thinks she's sure of this because she tends to gloss over the fact that Elly didn't suddenly go insane; she looked functional for the longest time before her mind went on strike. Once Dee accepts this, it'll make life a bit easier. It's too bad that the same cannot be said for April.
You see, she's getting a bit antsy about living in close quarters no matter how much her opinion is valued; the need to defend the pets she has left makes it a bit harder for Mike to talk about his glorious past as a dirt-oridinary little boy doing stupid things. She's also, I'd say, a bit angry that they've begun to think that nothing can be done for her parents. She's fairly young so she can't quite accept that sometimes things cannot be fixed no matter how sincere yoiur efforts are. Ah, well. One day, she'll join the chorus of people who'll shrug and say that there wasn't anything that could be done.
Oddly enough, Elizabeth is about the only person who sees this as an advanatage. The fact that her parents are non sompos mentis keeps Anthony in check when he wants to play his little passive-aggressive games with her; he can't, for instance, phone Elly and make Liz and Françoise not watch "The Secret Saturdays". For those of you who don't know what that is, it's an animated program about a family of superscientists who keep the knowledge of rare animals called "cryptids" from becoming common knowledge; every week, they have to stop their arch-enemy from either trying to reveal the secret or conquer the world. Françoise likes it because the cryptids are cool. Liz likes it because the morals aren't clear-cut. (Also because it drives Anthony, who keeps braying about how improbable it is, up the wall.) I'm kind of sorry that I let them watch the show while Anthony was out; I'd hate to think that I gave her a club to beat him over the head with. You just know that she's making a list of his failings for when she grows sick of him. Her old boyfriend from up North might think that this will last but he's a majority of one.
We'll have to see how that turns out when it happens, though. I'd like to end the letter on a lighter note. You see, Deanna has herself a new hobby: belly dancing. She got into it on her trip and she's taking an evening course. When she mentioned it first, I almost made a Danny Thomas-like spit take. I mean, Mike's right to be glad that she's got the courage to get out there and do something with her time but this is sort of odd because it's the last thing you'd think something like her would do. I guess that Wilf had something when he said that that meant it was the first thing she'd do, though. In any event, she's getting to meet more people in the neighborhood and that's always a good thing. In any event, that's about it from me. I'll try to be more timely next month so until then...
Yours,
Mira