Being who we are, even if FOO is different and doesn't like it

[New Leaf]

New Leaf, do you understand why your mother and brother and sister capitulated to her in the care decisions for your father?

She talked with the doctors, Copa, she ranted and railroaded until there was no stopping it. She made it appear that if he didn't, then his "death" would be on everyone else hands. It was a sort of insidious adult tantrum. Not screaming and thrashing, but a blatant insistence that this be so.

Is it because she is so persistent and dominant about it, and people fold?

Most certainly it is this.

Or does she actually do things to get her way, that may be secretive or underhanded?

This is true, also.

In the case of my sister with my mother, my sister actually acted unilaterally and improperly when she had no legal right to do so, and intervened in a way that was unwarranted, wrong and cruel. To my mother and to me.

This is wrong, I am so sorry this happened.

But it was a wake up call to me. And to my mother. It gave us the window to take protective steps.

My brother has power of attorney. He and sis will not let Attilla be Mom's caretaker.

I felt compelled to support my mother to arrange her affairs legally to protect herself (and me).

Mom has assured me, she has everything in order. Attilla has already staked her claim on certain items. I know she has taken things from Mom, and would do it again. It is a horrible feeling Copa, to know that when my Mom goes, it will be a feeding frenzy on Attillas part.

My sister will never forgive us. She does not see she did anything wrong. But has never in her whole life felt she did.

COPA

This will be so with Attilla, I fear.
I think she is upset with me, that I talk with my little sister a lot now. I see she has tried to turn me against my brother and sister.
So sad and strange to be this way.

Thank you Copa for sharing your story, it helps to shine the light on mine.

Goodnight dear friend. Sweet dreams.

leafy

 

[Copabanana]

It is a horrible feeling Copa, to know that when my Mom goes, it will be a feeding frenzy on Attillas part.

I know how this feels and it feels rotten. It feels if they are feasting on us. At least it did to me.

It was a feeding frenzy by my sister for the years leading up to my mother's death.

My sister anticipated gorging herself upon my mother's death. She could not. But she did give her husband the key to enter my mother's house and raid it. That felt bad, but knowing that we had acted to prevent her raiding the whole estate which she anticipated doing, gave me some peace.

My sister thought we would be co-executors and be jointly designated to make financial and care decisions. My sister is an attorney and I am sure she felt by her legal knowledge and the power of her personality (and my weakness) she would steamroll over me.

My mother changed it to give me sole power. She could not do one thing, because nothing was changed in the will about disbursing assets. I gained not one thing. Her hands were tied. If I tell the truth, I lick my chops at this. The tortoise prevailed.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

I know not one thing of my moms estate. I would just like for her to have peace these last days of her life. She pinches pennies and is very careful and frugal. She sent me a huge check for Christmas two years back. I called her crying and told her I would put it in the bank for her. She insisted it was for me, but I have kept it for her, in case she needs anything.
I do not like to think badly of my sister, but I think this is her way. It is the manipulating part. The false pretense of being a nice person, but deep down have ulterior motives.
It is confusing and shameful.
I am sorry you went through this Copa.
It is devastating in every way.
Leafy

 

[Copabanana]

Thank you New Leaf.

It is devastating in every way.

It is.

But writing these posts is good for me because I see how far I have come.

When I began on this forum just 6 months ago, I longed for my sister. I started a thread about it and that was when I got to know Cedar and Serenity.

And I also felt very, very hurt, humiliated and ever dirtied by the ways she had treated M and I. I gave her a lot of power over me and I did not know why.

By posting on the FOO threads I took a lot of my power back. I came to see that my sister had never really been a sister to me, had treated me badly and disloyally and was not a person I liked or respected.

I came to see myself as the powerful one. She receded in power and importance in my inner life, as she had in my actual one.

Your relationship with your sister seems more well-rounded, like there is real pleasure and love between you as well as the negative stuff. It also seems like you have the support of your other siblings who see her as you do. That is important to not be alone with this.

In my case, I was the odd man out. I was the target and I was the one who was excluded. Or excluded myself. Or both.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

New Leaf, the thing to think about is that it does not really have to be devastating.

You are coming to understand that her power is not as great as you think and she may think. She can be curbed. She has been already in the control she may have with your Mother.

You are understanding, too, much of what she did to you as a child. That is taking back your power from her.

I do not think she can hurt you much if you understand what and who she is and has been and stand up to her, which you have.

If you face the truth now, how devastating can what she does really be? The hard, hard thing you have already faced, by your trip. And you continue to face it, with grace and strength.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

It is confusing and shameful.

The remarkable thing about the sisters is how little if any shame they do feel.

They are truly emperors with no clothes.

You know the funny thing about me, is that I still persist in seeing my sister as kindly. (There can be a sweetness about her.)

Cedar and Serenity will be concerned for me when they read this.

(She won an award for compassion and kindness from her big city. I about threw up.)

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

In my case, I was the odd man out. I was the target and I was the one who was excluded. Or excluded myself. Or both.

I still have a great deal of pain about this, about all of the years I separated myself from my mother. How I wish there had been another way.

COPA

 

[Carolita2]

As I have come through this and realized how twisted and wrong everything was, what I believe is that each of the children was scooped out in a way, and reformed in the image of the thing my mother needed to see reflected back to her. I always sound so awful when I post about my mom. In many ways, she was a loving mother.

I think that I think about it in this way: I am still who I always was. That is the genetic piece, I suppose. But for me, the question is one of having been hurt often enough, or betrayed often enough, into sifting every experience and every response through a filter comprised of a set of beliefs having something to do with a feeling from my mother of contempt, or of intense hate, and with rage, and self-centeredness and the will to power. A will to dominate, and a kind of blindness. No concept that the living child was not a doll, and should not be thrown to the floor or kicked or made to cry. I post again and again about my mother (maybe) having reflected to her children negative, and not the positive, grandiosity most mothers reflect to their newborns and to their children throughout their lives.

It has to do with a story someone told me once about a mother who told her child she stiffened up when she held her, so she propped her bottle and didn't hold her. It has to do with the way that same mother behaved when the daughter had her first child. It has to do with the way Copa describes her mother condemning Copa's son because Copa fell while running after him. It has something to do with celebration of female rites when a daughter gives birth, or adopts a child and is raising him and the celebration and warmth and support just isn't there.

My mother did not, was not able to, celebrate those rites with me, either.

In her defense, I will readily admit that I was never comfortable with my mother, even as an adult. It may be that I am not easy to be close to. I do not trust. There is a barrier, especially where my mother is concerned, and that is all there is to it. It isn't that I don't love her. I do actually, very much. I have learned never to trust her. What a rotten thing to say, I know.

But that is the feel of it.

It has to do with how a child would have been raised, by a mother who felt in such a way that her children are uncomfortable with her to that degree, as adults. Maybe, our mothers were poorly mothered, themselves. I think it is more than that, though. I was loved, but I was hurt and objectified, too. The other wounds, the wounds surrounding the births of my children, those happened from one adult woman to another. That sacred space that should exist between the mother...I don't know. Between the mother, truly celebrating what it is to hold and cherish and raise your baby and the promise in all of it, and her daughter as she prepares to give birth and become a mother, herself ~ for me, that was empty. It was D H mom who taught me to hold and celebrate my babies, and who celebrated those mother to daughter rites with me. The grieving that seems so normal in healthy families was all twisted in the most incredible ways in my family of origin, when my father died. My mother's glee at being the only one left to tell the story, once the last cousin had died...does this stuff even happen anywhere else?!?

That breakage, that place, that emptiness that displays itself so blatantly once we are adults and continues to color our relationships to our mothers for all of our lives, that is what the difference was, between our mothers and healthy mothers, I think. It is as though they had nothing to pattern on, nothing to give us.

So, the answer would be that the interests we might all have pursued had our families of origin been healthier have been devoted instead to trying to make sense of why no one seems to honestly love us. I think this is true for all the sibs. We are like interchangeable pieces, in a way. Bargaining chips almost, in a game of the mother's devising that we just don't get the rules for.

Each of us is forever off balance.

The mother, from what I've read online, seems determined to prevent the sibs ever coming together, fomenting jealousy where and as she can even after the children are adults.

On Monday, I read this during my zipping around trying to learn more about what actually did happen to us: Our neural networks will have been developed to focus on survival. Hypervigilence, an empathy so intense it's spooky rather than an awareness of our own feelings, a belief that we don't think or talk or reason well, a perfect inability to trust.

Limiting beliefs regarding our current abilities and potential.

That is the killing thing.

Think how harmfilled a thing it is not to be able to believe we can and not to be able to believe we are entitled to try with our whole hearts.

Think what these mindsets will have meant in our lives.

There are children raised to believe: "Let me win. If I cannot win, let me be brave."

We were raised not to try for ourselves; not to take ourselves or our activities or our hopes seriously. The serious thing in our lives then, as now, was Mother. (Or, whoever our abuser was.) Our sibs picked up on that, of course but so did we, each of us believing the worst about ourselves and each other at the Mother's behest.

To this, I would add a tendency to denigrate past accomplishments. I am forever surprised at how well I have done something. That is a mother-engendered belief system.

That is what I see in my family of origin today, those dirty rotten shunners.

Oh, wait.

I meant pass the salt.

:O)

Cedar

I am trying to figure it out too.

I do not think it is in the main about them. I think it is about how the rest of the children respond to the sister or brother.

Had I been willing to play ball with my mother and step-father I could have played the part, too. What we overlook sometimes, is the steep, steep price they pay for the influence they gain.

Parentification is what they call what happened to us, Cedar.

Whereby there is a role reversal between parent and child and the child is called upon to parent her parent...fulfilling emotional needs, as a way to survive.

I found an article that talks about it in relation to sibling rivalry.

Interestingly, I found it by googling Cinderella and sibling rivalry.

Katarzyna Schier Krakow

The consequences of the neglect of children’s developmental needs. The relationship of the siblings.

I was looking to better understand how and why our sisters became the way they were but did not find much in the article to help me out.

COPA

I'm new to FOO. Coming over from Substance Abuse..But FOO is why I roll the way I do in all matters affecting my life. I still deal with mom..My values have kept me involved..She is 89..I have gone to her empty well most of my life with expectations that she would accept me, hear me...love me..She told me recently that when we were infants and toddlers that parents didn't think we had feelings or ideas until we could walk and talk. She took good care of our physical needs but that's as far as it went. She has lost the power to devastate me..but I can get riled at times. I have to minimize contact . Being with her feels like work..I am nothing like my FOO, who is left anyway. Dad and brother are deceased...I look foward to being part of these discussions..Carolita

 

[InsaneCdn]

Mom has assured me, she has everything in order. Attilla has already staked her claim on certain items. I know she has taken things from Mom, and would do it again. It is a horrible feeling Copa, to know that when my Mom goes, it will be a feeding frenzy on Attillas part.

She sent me a huge check for Christmas two years back. I called her crying and told her I would put it in the bank for her. She insisted it was for me, but I have kept it for her, in case she needs anything.

Leafy, perhaps your Mom is wise. She may be trying to protect some of the assets so your sister doesn't get the lion's share. If there are little things that you would really like to have, maybe speak up and see if Mom would start sharing some of her "things" before she is gone - when SHE has full control over who gets them.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It is her dominating and insistence that things go her way that is her undoing. She seems to have a different perception of things, feels that she is right in this, I mean RIGHT. She has a strong sense of self, and seeming empathy, but put to the test, when things do not go as she would like them, is quickly angered and overpowering.

My sister is this way. It is the strangest thing, to realize it. Her reality seems a thing half composed of lies. Threat, too. It is difficult to know who manipulates who, in the relationships happening in my family of origin. Remember my posting about the phone call before last from my sister in which, after not taking her calls for so many months (And mine not being taken by her for many months before that.), she leaped into a discussion about the man who wanted to marry my mother with the words: "We've been duped."

We had not been duped. I believed, and had repeatedly said so, loud and clear, that my mother had a chance at a different kind of life with that man who wanted to marry and take her away. It is interesting to note that, though I could not see it then, the man was villainized using, almost verbatim, the same words and accusations used by my mother and my sister to villainize my
D H.

How strange it seems to know it now, but my sister seems to have had some fantasy life going on in all those months. She had come to believe, without doubt, that I believed as she did, a belief system made up of whole cloth, that the man who wanted to marry my mother was dangerous, manipulative, abusive. I have posted before about my sister's having told my mother that she needed a mother, and that this was my mother's time to provide that for her.

Isn't that something.

That is what I mean, when I post we all are so damaged, so hurt and alone.

I get it that I am always all mad about my being shunned and so on. But...would I be myself at all, if I were the one taking care of my mother? The answer to that one is a resounding no.

But then, I would not have been taking care of my mother. She would have lived that life of travel and huge, extended family and good food. Pierogies were a Polish food he was always going to make for us, but never did.

He loved my apple pie, too.

I wish with all my heart my mother had married the Greek Orthodox priest, and that he had taken her away.

Sister won, on that one...or, did all of us lose.

Or, were all of us saved.

I don't know. My mother is well taken care of, and is not alone or lonely. It hurts me less and less, to know I am shunned.

So, that's good, then.

Perhaps the shunning only worked when I was so committed to that family dinner I was always posting about.

Michael Corleone:

1) My circle is small.
2) Something about loyalty, here.
3) Never f*** me over.

Which has turned into: Believe as you like.

Yet, she can be likable. She has endearing qualities, and strikes up easy conversations. She can be fun to be with.

I thought my sister was funny and likable, too.

D H says that is not so, and that it was never so.

Interestingly, I found it by googling Cinderella and sibling rivalry.

My father called me Cinderella.

I will look for the article Copa. Just lately though, I think of my sister and even, of my mom, less and less. That riveting fascination and the hurt and shame of all of it is...it's like I know there will be something for me to learn in that pain, so I see it differently, now. It was never something awful they did to me that created those shamed places. Creating those shamed, silent places I see now as signposts to healing.

I did that.

Not them.

Yay, me.

When I do think of them, things happen like what is happening on the Attitude thread. Trauma and healing and free from some veil or chain or thin coating of colored ice. The color of the ice is yellow. Those from the North, as I am, will understand this to mean something, or someone, has urinated, there.

There is a whole kind of humor, up North, surrounding the issue of yellow snow. In the North, all children eat snow and icicles and wonder at the lacey intricacy of frost on the windowpane.

So, that is an interesting piece about this material having to do with my family of origin.

That the ice is yellow.

This connects, too. I have a lady friend who raises pedigreed Icelandic sheep. To protect them, she saves her urine and marks her territory around where the sheep are penned.

The urine of the alpha female.

And her sheep have never yet been attacked, though bears prowl there, and wolves.

I felt compelled to support my mother to arrange her affairs legally to protect herself (and me).

My sister will never forgive us. She does not see she did anything wrong. But has never in her whole life felt she did.

I wonder Copa, whether it is less that the sister cannot forgive than it is that your courage and assertion and presence shamed the sister into a chance of awakening to who she is and she has refused it. There is such vehemence, such insistence to hurt in the things you have posted about your sister's actions, and about the way she seems to require witnesses she has already poisoned against you to agree with her.

At one point, you posted something to the effect that after a time, the new husband seemed to have seen through his new wife's machinations regarding your efforts, and called an end to that particular action the sister was insisting on.

There is a more vehement energy here than what everything appears to be on the surface. It is impossible to believe it could be so. That is how it feels, for me, too. ("Surely, this cannot be correct. What kind of person thinks like this." How many times have I posted exactly those words as I have come through this? And how many times did the nastiness I thought I was clearing turn into some burgeoning something impossible to miss. And so, in my denial, in my insistence that we could do that family dinner, I hid the burgeoning something away beneath some innocuous little thing like an eye roll. But beneath it was everything I needed, to see clearly, and to heal.)

It feels so bad to know our people do not love us. It feels like we are not lovable; that we are defective, and not damaged, at all. But just the opposite is true: We are damaged, not defective. We were perfect, in the beginning. We will come through this whole and healthy again because that is the way things are meant to be. Remember the layers I was posting about somewhere recently? The scab at the top of the thing: Self contempt. The infection, the name of the infected thing that created the need of the scab lest it spread, system wide: Shame

And the wound: Abandonment

But we have Eckhart, now: Nothing can stand before the fact of your Presence.

And we have Brene: Just sit with the feelings.

That is how we are healing.

Especially now that Serenity is back with us, bringing up just the right questions for clarification.

Here we all are.

Isn't that something.

Cedar

But it is better to know.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I'm new to FOO. Coming over from Substance Abuse..But FOO is why I roll the way I do in all matters affecting my life. I still deal with mom..My values have kept me involved..She is 89..I have gone to her empty well most of my life with expectations that she would accept me, hear me...love me..She told me recently that when we were infants and toddlers that parents didn't think we had feelings or ideas until we could walk and talk. She took good care of our physical needs but that's as far as it went. She has lost the power to devastate me..but I can get riled at times. I have to minimize contact . Being with her feels like work..I am nothing like my FOO, who is left anyway. Dad and brother are deceased...I look foward to being part of these discussions..Carolita

Welcome, Carolita.

Together here, we have made astonishing progress in our healing.

I am glad you are here with us, too.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Leafy, perhaps your Mom is wise. She may be trying to protect some of the assets so your sister doesn't get the lion's share. If there are little things that you would really like to have, maybe speak up and see if Mom would start sharing some of her "things" before she is gone - when SHE has full control over who gets them.

My mother has done this, for me.

The feeding frenzy, the sense of entitlement and the determination to have all of it at the expense of the other sibs began in my family before my father's death and may always have been the dynamic where my sister is concerned.

How extraordinary that this could be true of you too, Leafy.

I see it in Copa's sister's behaviors, and in the behaviors of Serenity's sister, as well. That sense of entitlement to hurt, to shame ~ the expectation that it is within the sisters' power to shame and to shun and to destroy loyal and honest connection.

The sisters believe this is their right. This is an essential piece in the dynamics of our particular family of origin dysfunction, but I don't see how it all fits together, yet.

I see it in Feeling's sister's behaviors. And I think Feeling is not going to like that I say so, but I believe your sister knew exactly what she was doing to you, Feeling. And I believe it was intentional. You are held beneath a transparent film that keeps you imprisoned beneath the unassailable truth that your sister could not help what she did; that she did not know and was not responsible.

Which makes you responsible.

Like me, and like each of us here Feeling, you carry the guilt and shame of the other's choices.

But you are here with us, now.

***

When I think like this about my mother and my sister and how awful everything seems now, then I think I should have protected my mother.

That is what Copa did. Came back to protect her mother.

Copa does not see the courage in her actions, or the danger.

I do.

Until we are healed and can see again, we are without defense before the toxic patterns evolved in our dysfunctional families of origin.

There is such vehemence, such insistence to hurt in the things you have posted about your sister's actions, and about the way she seems to require witnesses she has already poisoned against you to agree with her.

This means the sister is lying, Copa. That the witnesses have been poisoned against you in advance. There is nothing you can do I think, Copa. The sister will insist on this dynamic, forever. It is an artifact of her own abuse, maybe.

But see the gift you have received in M's sister, Copa, and in all of us.

It was never that you were afraid to be alone, Copa. It was that you chose not to.

Just like I was doing, with family dinner.

Here is a secret, everyone: I admire myself for believing we could.

***

"Right needs no defense. Just good witness."

I forgot who said that.

Cedar

You guys are fascinating me too much again today.

:O)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If I tell the truth, I lick my chops at this. The tortoise prevailed.

Decency prevailed, Copa.

Because you are brave.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You know the funny thing about me, is that I still persist in seeing my sister as kindly. (There can be a sweetness about her.)

Cedar and Serenity will be concerned for me when they read this.

Here is Nietzsche again, Copa: The love came first. How you see your sister is who you are. We define others by who we are, ourselves. There is no other mirror.

I love it that you see her like this, and I know it rings true for you because it is true of you, Copa. You are kindly, and funny and so bright. But you are honest, too. I think the sister cannot do that, yet.

What I am concerned about is that you posted yesterday about losing weight and cutting your hair, and about your mother. I mentioned it to D H last night.

We are both paying attention.

I meant to find that post and quote it here this morning but I have not done that, yet.

Cedar

 

[Carolita2]

Welcome, Carolita.

Together here, we have made astonishing progress in our healing.

I am glad you are here with us, too.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Carolita2]

Thanks Cedar..for the welcome..

 

[Copabanana]

My middle son texted me and said that he is so sad that he cannot concentrate, is worried that he will fail one of his classes, can't eat, and feels like he is going to die.

My first impulse was to tell you to save him. Uh oh. I forgot until Cedar reminded me that we have detached.

I told him to eat...or I am flying up there. He has never been this depressed before.

I agree with Cedar. He will take his cues from you. I know the area where he lives up north a little bit there is a nature program where they do kayak trips from the ocean up the river. They also teach ocean kayaking in that area. I was going to do it. If you are interested I will get the name.

For both of you it would be a good thing to do something fun--that could lead to a hobby. Up north in Santa Cruz there is surfing school and open water swim school. If you and he were to do a class, in something, together, it could open up a new hobby for him. That would be all it takes. These can be solitary pursuits that serve to open up a new world in oneself.

I know I am being naggy. I cannot help myself.

And there is a saying out there about difficult people, who are a little tormented because they don't fit, being the ones who change the world.

Think about even Bill Clinton who was nothing at all like a difficult child. Or even Obama. There was nothing at all about these men predictive of their elevati on to be president. Each was catalyzed by their pain domestic violence, separation from fathers, a racial identity that had to be worked out. These wounds catapulted them, not so much that, but fueled them to decide to be president. At a very, very young age. These were decisions to combat a sense of difference, perhaps even shame.

I know I am on a tangent, but we lose sight on what propels the development of commitment. It is deciding to master instead of succumb. A decision.

but I will be old, and without experience and probably, unable to drive well.

We will go to the NY City metropolitan area, I hope, where there is excellent public transportation. You can come, too. We will not drive there. I could not cross the bridges into NYC and M, for now, will not have the legal right to drive and he is as afraid as am I.

ZIP lining. That is what it is called. Baklava grand does zip lining.

In my life I have not heard of this, but I will look it up. I think I want to do it too.

The kids can be irritated (or we can) and that irritation is nothing, in light of the love.

That is real person to person communication, Copa.

Yes, thank you Cedar. There is great love.

Except I am dreading, the word is dread which I have for thanksgiving. My son had wanted to come to see us a couple of weeks ago, and I said, how about Thanksgiving, and he said, you mean, instead?

He is coming to grips with the damage that has been done not to the underlying love but to the relationship by his actions. Of which he has been made aware by my detaching.

And I am no longer so ready to submit myself to more suffering, where I get sick and have to hide in my room to survive my son's visits. The thing is when I even think of my son visiting I feel ill. My stomach hurts.

I could say, we will come and visit you and we can go out to eat in the Big City, but I already mentioned Thanksgiving.

M's sister and I talked about whether or not I will prepare dinner, and she decided that she will. So maybe that will be the solution. My son can come with us there, or not. His choice.

I do not want him to stay days and days. I can deal with 2 nights. Coming Wednesday night, leaving Friday mid-day. At most.

To write this I am forced to confront how much I do not want him here. It was all so, so hard. I have gotten so much better. I do not want to suffer, again.

I think he might have actually slipped and almost called me mom

This is painful. After I adopted my son and I began to see my Mother and sister again, I refused to call my mother, Mommy or Mama. It took years because I did not want to give her what I felt was that honor, because I felt she had failed me, and I could not let my mouth form the word.

I was wrong. For her, and for myself. Why did I want to punish her that way? It makes me sad and mildly ashamed. How sad for both of us.

I believe looking back I was very like a D C.

Cedar, why are you and D H concerned that I might decide to physically turn into my mother? I could not really because I am 6 inches taller.


COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Hi Carolita

I love your name. Welcome to you.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am rechristening my sister Atilla, too.

Ha!

I feel so mean, like a tough street lady, all attitude and with really long fingernails and outrageous cleavage exposed for all the world to see and I don't even care.

And with my pants too tight.

Like, skin tight.

Striding along like I own it.





Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Feeling, I know that surfing and kayaking and open water swim sound radical. I know I can be a fruitcake about activities, and other things, too. I believe in hobbies.

We cannot tell him this, your son, but in the area that he lives there is a history of Japanese families with significant agricultural holdings. Are your sons in touch with their father or their father's family? Do they express interest in their paternal heritage?

Actually, in the Santa Cruz area there is a woman that teaches Saori weaving, a very interesting concept, kind of incorporating the Wabi Sabi aesthetic concept of the Japanese which I find so fascinating and beautiful.

I am now going to look up Zip Lining or whatever it was called. I need to know what it is before I make plans to do it.

Even if you do not do a certain thing with him, that you suggest it, will mean a lot, I think.

I am remembering, again, the couple of times my mother came to visit me when I was a young woman. How important these times were for me. I do not think she remembered.

I really neglected hobbies in my life. I subordinated them to goals. When I was a young woman I learned to swim. It was so meaningful to me. I joined a master's swim club and swam a mile a day. I loved it. It was so good for me. And then when I began my doctorate, I dropped it.

Then I did the same thing with my dancing.

I know that the goals are important, but a rich daily life is important too. You have a number of strong interests which you pursue. I know you know that. I am telling myself.

COPA