Monogrammed Towels

 Monogrammed towels 

Roz and Uncle Albert are conspiring to make things easier for me, whatever that means - other than that I’ve been wallowing and need to be drawn “out of the mire,” to be made “easier in myself.” They're moving furniture, so I'll look out of windows more, even if it's at the damn mire - the snow that continues to crap down and crap up the view.
     I told Dr. Feight yesterday, “I’ve been wallowing.” “Where?” he asked. “In the mire,” I said. Typically, he didn’t ask what I meant by that. So I started talking about my sister Hannah, who is, I was contending, as messed-up as I am, only she won’t admit it.

Here is a phenomenon I don’t quite understand (so while I believe it to be near-universal, I can’t claim that it is). (It is not an admirable trait): We want those we love to be happier than we are, but the evidence is clear to us: they are not - they can’t be.

     My sister is very well off. She was born organized. She went to good schools. She married well, into a highly successful family. She set up her own business, and it has been ever more successful.

     She and her husband own three homes and four cars. The cars have different purposes: there is a pick-up for hauling and a convertible for summer evenings, for example. There is a house in town and a house on the lake. The house in town has a view of the lake. The house in Florida is on a river.

     All the houses are big, with open floor plans, and beautifully furnished. She and Ike (named Dwight David after President Eisenhower) both love “stuff,” from furniture hand-made to fit where it belongs to thick monogrammed towels that match the walls of their bathrooms. This can’t be healthy, can it? They are compensating for something they are missing, they must be?

I asked Dr. Feight, "This can't be healthy, can it?" But he didn’t say.

03.23.18