Reply #146: Thank you for the kind words. [View All]

[CTyankee]

I like to think that my mother's good "mothering" gave me the skills to be a good mother to my daughters who are wonderful mothers, one with 3 girls, the other with a boy who has a sensory disability often mistaken for autism. Both are extremely competent in their skills and I am so proud. Part of my mother's good mothering had to do with her own coping and surviving skills during the Depression. The same with my father, who had absolutely nothing starting out.

It's interesting. My children's father was very privileged growing up. He went to Harvard, getting "gentlemen's C's" throughout and coasted thru life until finally it caught up with him. I had divorced him at that point because I was tired of having to depend on him. He was a person who had a lot going from him. He is now haunted by the IRS for back payment of taxes and is miserable and clinically depressed in his elder years.

I've learned something from this. Being culturally and economically advantaged doesn't mean much if you can't cope every day. I am disgusted with people like him, but I have sympathy for folks in the ghetto...