What Makes People Go Bad?

This afternoon, in my never-ending decluttering effort, I'm scanning in a bunch of photos of my mother. She's turning 98 next week, and—ever the optimist—I don't want to have to rush to put together a "slideshow" for her memorial service when she dies.

In one envelope I found pictures of each of Mother's three sisters—Helen, Louise, and Betty—at age 18. These would have been taken in 1915, 1919, and 1921. Lovely young women.

I look at their faces, their hair. I look in their eyes. I wonder what their lives were like. I've heard a few horror stories about their father. My supposition is he was the reason Mother had no inner resources to share with me once the adoption was final and I started to walk and talk. He may have had a similar impact on each of those girls.

Look at this photo of Betty, the youngest. I knew her as such a hateful, bitter woman. She never had children, and didn't marry until in her 40s or 50s. She would single out one of her sisters or one of her nieces or nephews and make them the Demon of the Decade (or some time period, until someone else took over the position). How can someone who looked so lovely in a photo at age 18 alienate every single member of her family?

I guess that's the question with all people who turn into career criminals or woman-chasing slippery-zipper husbands or drug addicts or skinheads. What went wrong? Someone, somewhere in this person's life, loved him or her—probably passionately! How did that love not seep in and ground the person and give him or her the wherewithal to have an upstanding, successful, fulfilling life?

It's probably a rhetorical question.

And two tidbits with the purpose of ending on a lighter note:

We're laboring under unending rain in northeast Ohio, with temps in the 40s and 50s. I speak for the masses when I say we are all sick of the rain and the cold!

The other day Tyler said to Boston, "Why is it so cold?" Boston, three months from turning ten, replied, "I'm guessing that's rhetorical."

I think I learned the meaning of "rhetorical" when I was about 32!

Here I am at five, with ten-year-old Jim[my] and twelve-year-old Jerry.