"Yes. Alberta." I said.
"She's very pretty," she said.
"Yes. Thank You."
"Do you have any children?"
"No. Not because I don't want any," I added quickly.
She looked at me sharply for a moment, and then I opened the door and we walked down the corridor.
Funny first meeting with the woman I would soon love more than any woman, wasn't it. Willow? We used to think so. It was hardly a romantic encounter. No music, no beautiful setting, no innocent laughter and carefree feelings. Instead, we were in my office with me being Mr. Psychiatrist.
You can't imagine how amusing your mother was when she imitated me, imitated my techniques, as she liked to call my little gestures and mannerisms. No one made me see myself clearer than your mother did. Willow. Through her eyes I finally understood who I was and for that. I would always be grateful to her. After she was gone. I often thought she had given me far more than I had given her.
I walked her past the arts and crafts room. which I noticed she looked at with some interest, and then we paused at the doorway of her room. She stood there looking in at it. hesitating. Our rooms were far from spartan. They all had pretty curtains, nice furniture, lots of brightness with the windows and the pleasant coffee-white walls, all of which had paintings on them, beautiful scenes of Nature, peaceful. meditative. The floors were carpeted, and each room had its own bathroom. Patients had to go to the entertainment center to watch television. We had game tables there, cards and checkers and chess boards, and a good library, We didn't want them spending too much time alone, you see.
But this was not home and I was sure quite a bit different from the bedroom your mother had at her home. She had brought along some of her personal things. which I learned included a number of presents her father had brought home to her from his various naval excursions. One of them was a teddy bear she already had on the bed.
I always prided myself in having great compassion for my patients. Willow, but seeing your mother standing there in the doorway of her clinic room, her eyes filling with the realization that this was her home for now and for perhaps a long, long time, practically brought tears to my eyes. I recognized immediately that I was feeling everything more deeply when it involved her. I didn't ignore it, but I did try not to pay any attention to it. Little did I know then how terribly I would fail at that. However, that was one personal failure I do not repeat, even to this day, Willow.
She turned and looked at me.
"What sort of a person was here before me?" she asked. "A young woman, not unlike yourself."
"What was wrong with her?"
"Serious mood swings. What we call bipolar."
"Is that what's wrong with me?"
"Let's wait and see, spend more time before we make any definitive diagnosis."
She smirked a bit, but that was a truthful answer on my part.
"Whatever happened to her?" she asked, nodding at the bed as if the previous patient were still there.
"She's home now with her family and she's doing well. Just like you will," I said.
She smiled, but it was the smile of someone humoring someone.
She didn't have to say the words. I could hear them: -.Yeah, sure. Tell me another fairy tale."
Nothing stirred my determination more. Right then and there I swore to myself: I -will make her healthy and enough to take care of herself again. She will go home to her child,
3
A Forgotten Social Event
.
It wasn't often that I remained at the clinic and
had dinner with my staff or with some of our patients. but I very much wanted to that first night your mother arrived. Your stepmother Alberta was already quite annoyed with me because of how much time I was devoting to the clinic. She went so far as to accuse me of adultery. claiming I was more in love with it than I was with her. We were only married a short time before I was able to put the clinic together, and it was a very exciting opportunity for me at the time.
Even from the very beginning. I don't think your stepmother ever really respected the work I did. Willow. Oh, she liked the fact that she was married to a doctor, especially one who had something of a national reputation, but either she was frightened by my work or she was simply bored with it, for she hated my bringing home any stories about the clinic and especially anything at all to do with any and all of my patients.
Ironically, her father had no respect for psychiatric medicine. He thought it was all a way to excuse people from their responsibilities and called it voodoo medicine. However, he looked upon our marriage very favorably. Of course my sister, your aunt Agnes, attributed all that to my father-in-law's poor economic situation. Alberta came from an old Southern family who had become land rich and dollar poor, and they were gradually losing all of their property, selling it off to developers in order to survive.