Show KATHLEEN NORRIS exaggerated self pity Is poison deu bell syndicate features ITea turea richen MY SISTER was three and I 1 almost five years old our loved daddy was killed in a motor crash says a letter lying here on my desk mother was left penniless but she reburn resumed ed her old profession of teaching and we had some happy years we three together dether to our little four room apartment was full of love and harmony and ply and I 1 wanted only to be with mother for the rest reat of our lives when mother married the family doctor a widower the letter goes on what has proved to be a fatal injury to my development took place I 1 was not conscious of it then naturally but the seeds of what grew to be absolute morbid ity were sown then sense of injustice our stepfather loved luy lily and me in e but two boy babies came to take our ou places and at 12 and 14 we were sent to boarding school our happy country summers and the letters and packages from mother never could remove our sense of deep injustice and it has colored both our lives lily never marriel married and has worked for years in the county home for mental cases I 1 have married twice unsuccessfully unsuccessful fu by and now feel that while my present husband Is an absolute angel I 1 am too sick weary and disillusioned disillusion ed to be a good wife for hini him or good mother to my boys boya now 17 and 6 5 years old it was my psychoanalyst who ho searching painstakingly through my past unearthed this unhappy kitun tion la in my girlhood and has hai helped too sick and weary me enormously by putting the blame for or this injustice where it belongs on the accident that robbed me of roy my fattier father and my mothers second marriage this Is only part ot of a 17 page letter which I 1 have not answered it takes more patience than possess to sympathize with such a woman and yet she Is typical of actual hundreds who write mk rn every year that fancied slights iri justices and disadvantages afaf back in their perfectly normal everyday give and take epand u and down american childhoods havi have upset their mental balances tot for life it has become the fashion to seek back tor for something mth mother or or dad did or something they left undone and lay stupidities resent ments failures and flaws in char arch aclei all to that wail must compensate for wrongs jut aut good heavens which one on of us suffered wrongs far deeper than these imaginary ones diana lists here not once but all through our younger parents will have favorites teachers will put the blame on the wrong child and young bewilderment and contusion confusion will lead children into embarrassing and humiliating humi hurni lating morasses unless we make up our minds at 5 or 7 or even earlier that the way the stupid world of grownups to Is end and develop tome some sort of shell philosophy or spiritual balance to offset lt it we shall grow gron up like lily and Diana lopsided beings beines whose wretched destiny it la is to complicate further rather than help straighten out t this h I 1 13 enigma that is life somo some of us die in auto crashes every year so that detail didat particularly distinguish these little sisters bisters terrible but its the truth and as for a pretty mother at 29 taking a second mate tor for happy years ot of motherhood and companionship panion ship was that such a crime never to be forgiven mother says another part of dianas letter was always trying to make us like uncle rob as we called her husband but we saw through her devices in other words you and lily were ungracious little jealous minxes minces and did all you could to in your mothers chances for happiness ba la in her marriage im au all for modern psychological methods when they deal with the problems 0 of f the immediate present many good doctors and teachers and all good mothers know how to handle those cases that arise in connection with almost every childs development their adroitness in analysis and method Is amusingly evident to those of us w who h 0 c can a n remember our own young vagaries inhibitions and fixations only under simpler names As long as the psychologists take today da y tell their patients just wrong tod today ay then im with them but when they encourage us to dig into the past to distio discover ver that at four months ones bottle was late in arriving and at three years mother said maid she already had kissed us goodnight and was waa going downstairs now and that these heinous crimes lived on a and n d malignantly affected all gur ur later years then thea that thai is sheer nonsense silly find all these instances solemnly portrayed in a recent tec ent moving picture that supposedly represents a womans comans experience peri ence in a madhouse these aro are the caus causes es that sent her there |