This morning's letter is from his mom. The fiancee's mom. So far as I know, she's still alive. He actually e-mailed me after my mother's death telling me that his father was gone, but that his mother was still there. He told me that he couldn't forgive his father for being the mean bastard that apparently he was, and was angry with his mother for continuing to stand up for him. I wrote back something about forgiving my own father, but he did not respond. I send him little reports once in a great while, hoping for a conversation at some point in time, but no longer expecting one. That one willl have to do.

The letter is a very loving one. She says she doesn't like the picture of him in his uniform. "He looks very unhappy in it. A real sober Puss." She had three or four sons, I believe. My fiancee' was the youngest of them. She loved them all very much, and it shines through in this letter. She would have been a great mother-in-law. I would have disappointed her.

I know how this sounds. But I am really not being as hard on myself as I seem to be. Were there things I wish I could have done differently? Not only here, but in many other times of my life? Of course there were. Do I realize that I didn't do them differently because I wasn't capable of another course of action at the time. Yes, I do. Do I regret the life I actually have had and still have? No, not at all. Like I said before, I think - these regrets of mine are simply (a) regrets that other people had to have been hurt because I was going through changes - but I have been hurt by other people's changes, so I hope it balances; and (b) that regret we all have that we could not have had our own life plus two or three others.

For instance, not only would I have like to have been able to marry this guy and have his mother for my mother-in-law and make eveybody happy, including myself, and eventually turn into Ina Garten. I would also like to have travelled the world and climbed Everest (I knew the route that Hillary and Tenzing Sherpa took by heart a month after they reached the top. I can still get all goose-bumply hearing the words "South Col," "Ice Fall," "Hillary Step." But I lived in Illinois. A high hill was about 25 feet. And the same uncertainty that prevented my marriage to Larry also prevented me from other adventures. And I no longer want to climb Everest. But I can make a mean Jam Thumbprint.