Sixth date 2, Letter to parents

I don't think I'll be able to describe the past week in a single post -- way too much went on. So I am going to nibble away at it in bits.

D left this morning. Also this morning, I answered an e-mail I had gotten a couple of days ago from my Dad, after we visited them for a day last week. He wrote in part:

It was fun meeting your friend [D]. You two sure seem to hit it off famously. I can't remember when we had such a good time just sitting up and talking about . . . whatever! Does she have an email address?

On the downside, I am deeply distressed about what is happening to [Wife]. Part of the distress is that I don't really know what it is that's happening to [Wife]. But whatever it is, there could be intense consequences for you and the boys as well. Naturally, you are going to want to shield [Son 1] and [Son 2] from the worst manifestations of your conflicts because they are at a vulnerable age. [Son 2] probably more so than [Son 1], but who can say for sure?

Keep in touch. We do not intend to interfere where we're not needed or wanted. But DO let us know if you would like us to help out in any way. For example, if you and [Wife] want to get away together, we could play host to [the boys] for a while this summer, and shuttle them to their [various summer commitments].

In reply, I wrote back as follows:

[D] does indeed have an e-mail address. You should be able to reach her at [insert e-mail address here]. I think she is planning to drop you a note as well ... she said she had a wonderful time.

As for [Wife], it is hard to put in a nutshell, because it has been kind of gradual. You know the story about putting a frog in a pot of boiling water, right? It's like that. But she has been sinking for a long time into a kind of shell of her former self, in which the negative qualities (some of which were admittedly there all along) are ever more prominent; and in which the positive qualities (which used to overshadow or compensate for them) are withering away. She always wanted to surround herself with acquisitions as a way of defining herself -- by things she inherited or by things that would show off her taste -- but these days there is no compensating interest in or concern for other human beings. She was always careful about her health, but these days her diseases have become an excuse to disengage from anything and anyone that she doesn't feel like troubling with. She was always able to stretch the truth for the sake of a good story, but these days she has built almost a whole alternate history for herself -- one that often (not always) takes its start from events that really happened, but that then twists those events beyond recognition and retells them in a form so different from what anybody else remembers that it can only be called a fabric of lies. For a long time I have just sat by as these changes have happened, in the interests of peace and because the changes have been slow and incremental. (It's that frog-in-the-stewpot thing again.) But there is something about D's visits (both of them now) that brings these issues to the fore and to a flashpoint.

Agreed that the consequences could be intense. I have relieved [Wife] of her gun and of her wallet (saving out only her driver's license and an ATM card which accesses her inheritance accounts). [Footnote to my readers: This means that she has access to some $23,000 any time she wants it, and she can drive anywhere she wants to go ... so even now she is not exactly without resources.] But I am not sure what is next.

It would probably be useful if [the boys] could spend some time with you. I have to travel [for work] in the last week of July, so that might be an excellent time to choose. Also, [D] pointed out that if I don't feel I can trust [Wife] with her wallet, then it's not clear that I want to trust her with managing all our assets in case I die unexpectedly. It might be useful if I could find some time to explore what it would take to rewrite my will so that someone else -- maybe you and Mom for now -- could step in as trustees in the unlikely event that something happens to one of my airplanes. I'm not quite sure how to go about this part.

I'll post more later. There is a lot to say.