Timely letter from Mom. I had a habit of acting out from time to time on my visits home, and I must have done so again at Thanksgiving, 1962.

She starts out with what a wonderful day it is, so beautiful, "what a day to be glad in."

Then she goes on:

"I hope that for your love of Larry you will change the kind of attitude you assumed last night. No man wants a brash, hard, cynical, unbeliever for a wife, honey - and I'm afraid it wouldn't be long until he would find you out if you continue to discipline yourself to selfishness and vulgarity."

Wonder if I was spouting Ayn Rand again (the old "virtue of selfishness" thang). Or confronting my father. Or just generally spouting whatever new philosophy I had come up with to argue against religion. "Brash, hard and cynical" huh. I suppose I was. Or was trying to be. And her last lines ring a bell. I WAS afraid he would find me out. Find out I wasn't as wonderful as he and his family all thought me to be. I knew I was a fraud. I wonder if those lines were not the beginning of my fear that I could never be what I thought he wanted me to be.