Hello, again; here I am back in Colorado and wishing I wasn't. That's because I have to be there physically AND emotionally for Deanna, Meredith and Robin for the simple, stupid and annoying fact that my dolt of a brother was and is neither. As April has no doubt told you, I didn't greet that little tidbit with anything approaching detachment. Check that; I detached myself from being detached. Oh, crap, enough with the puns; I had a panic attack. I mean, they looked like they were going to be all right despite everything so learning that he'd slid back into his witless habit of forting up and she into playing the ostrich was sort of not what I needed to hear; it made me think that some ill-defined 'something' would be so horrible, so hard to bear it would erode what little progress I've made. About the only thing that seems to be of any comfort is that Phil and Mira seem to have an idea of what the 'something' in this case is; it's a cold kind of comfort, though. What purpose would it serve to let a good thing slip away to atone for something he isn't really answerable for? It's a hard thing to know that your mother is pretty much going to live a third-rate life as the mascot of a seedy pool hall but it isn't his doing; as for any hope of getting the approval that he isn't aware he wants, why subject your kids to having to ask if this is their fault for something that wouldn't be worth having in the first place? It would be me like me rattling on about fate, faith and all that other jazz because my doughheaded father in law has just replaced Dad as Milborough's champion idiot. It doesn't make sense for him to be doing this any more than it does for Dad not to really realize why nobody else cares what happened to Mom. Here's a hint; he forgot to tell you that the City has just built a high fence to keep people from going into the ravine behind our old house; its official name is the "Sharon River Conservation Barrier". Unofficially, it's the Patterwall and the only entry that is accessible to humans is called the Farleygate. It may seem odd to you that it took us this long to realize it but we were too close to the situation and to her to realize that most people aren't exactly going to give a negligent twit who could have easily prevented it a free pass for damned near letting her child drown.
Come to think of it, from what Phil tells me the book that Mike thinks is more important than his marriage and his kids is about a pianist who thought that his daughter's fever wouldn't have ended up making her deaf. The man in question comes from a suburban family with a lazy, poorly-educated, snobby hypocrite of a mother of dubious mental stability who has three kids; the pianist himself, a daughter who marries a stock broker and a third child who nearly dies in an accident. This either means that he's finally trying to really wrap his head around why his life sucks or he's trying to impress Rhetta.
About the only good news I have to report is that April is doing well and the big, horrifying secret that Anthony thought to be the straw that would break this camel's back is that his dad is continuing to dig his own grave. The first is reassuring in its positivity while the second in that it almost looks as if life might after all go our way for a little while if that's the biggest problem. As for our children, Françoise is sort of confused by this; she does have a fair idea of the stakes, of course, but she can't see how this happened any more than she can see how it happened to her. I hope that when she figures it out her resentment of us isn't disproportionate but we'll get what we get. Jamie, on the other hand, is starting to explore his world; the Richardses that come to help us tell me that he's on track which makes all those pictures of me clinging to Mom like Garfield on a car window give me that broken glass feeling Anthony gets.
Well, enough about me and my family for a while; I promised I'd take Merrie and Robin out to look at the scenery; it beats sitting around watching Deanna do a slow burn. Let's hope that I have better news this April. Until then,
Yours,
Liz.