Thanks to all for the feedback, I really appreciate it. (Amos, thanks for the great lyrics.) Maybe because my childhood home had extremely strong currents of alchoholism and denial and sort of suppressed emotional abuse, and also held very powerful, smart, beloved beings who were churning around in all this muck, we (the then-kids)all fled from there as though we'd been sprung from Alkatraz. I was very good about writing home frequently, but it wasn't unusual for me to go for more than a year without seeing my parents, and despite my letters they were actually quite clueless about what my day-to-day life was like, what I was doing all day, sometimes even where I was. That got better after I got married and especially after my daughter was born, when I was 26. If I had it to do over again, I really don't know what I'd do differently. I like to think I'd be closer to them, but it's very hard to be close to a heavy drinker, and in those days nobody knew anything about intervention. I would have tried harder, I guess.

OTOH, I don't drink. I don't make the kind of money my folks had, by quite a long shot, but I really believe I've made an excellent trade in concentrating on my sanity and becoming a better human being. I'm divorced from my kids' Dad but we're on good terms. So I'm a little puzzled and a little pained that my kids feel the same need to put thousands of miles between themselves and their parents that my siblings and I felt.

I think my kids are great people, admirable. I'm proud of them. I even think it's cool that they're having this great wide-world experience. I love the idea of living in Italy myself, that would sure take the sting out of it, but it isn't really possible -- can't afford it, I have a job here, and anyway my husband wouldn't do it.

My kids are very slow about tech stuff. My son has to go to an internet cafe to check email, and he hasn't done that in the last week because he's been travelling around Brittany, playing gigs. They both (son & daughter) have email but they don't use it nearly as much as I do. I'm envious of close families, where parents and kids and siblings love contact and see each other at every opportunity, where family is consulted and included and treasured and wanted, where traditions like holidays together are kept and observed. It seems as though that actually happens in some families, I don't think it's completely mythical Hollywood hype. This is just some karmic thing I seem to have to work on. I've had to establish Thanksgiving traditions with friends, and I have, and we have great times (I have wonderful friends)but it still grates.

Trying not to bellyache too much. Thanks to all.