A couple of you have suggested I take a blogging break. I may do that in December, just submitting my minimum 20 blogs and focusing more on the holidays. I could use the extra time, but I’m afraid it won’t necessarily shut my mind down to the “other stuff” that swirls around me in some form or another much of the time.


As one reader commented recently, I have a PTSD response to making pork on the grill. I hadn’t really looked at it that way, but it’s true. It is hard not to think about Amy or Tommy around the holidays, because notwithstanding the horrible state of the “relationships”, it is not “natural” not to have all family members be part of the holiday. Even writing that statement, though, is fraught with peril … because there have been plenty of Christmases where a physical presence was achieved, but no positive contribution was made. So, I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I’d like everyone who is supposed to be here to be here, but it wouldn’t necessarily make for a happy occasion if they were … And no, I most certainly didn't add them to my family with this endpoint in mind.


If I blog less in December, I’ll vent less publicly, to be sure. But will I feel less angst about the state of affairs? I don’t know. One reader wondered if my writing about this stuff was therapeutic or kept the pot stirred. It used to be therapeutic … maybe that’s changing? The answer bears further evaluation.


Changing the subject here, I wanted to share something my legal-minded husband shared with me. We were talking about the discussion that occurred here about how much choice is there involved as far as our kids and their behavior is concerned. In other words, are our kids victims of brain wiring, mental illness and genetics, doomed to difficulties no matter what they do?


There was a very interesting episode of Law & Order on the other night. A man committed horrible crimes when he was off his medication for his schizophrenia. When he was medicated, he was very remorseful about what he had done when he was his “other self”. The question on the table, of course, was “Is he truly responsible for his crimes?”


My husband says the legal answer is, does the person know right from wrong and can they formulate the intent to do something. That is the legal definition of responsibility, I guess.


So in the case of our kids … do they know that their behavior is damaging to those around them, and can they formulate the intent to change it? Nancy Ashe talks about how she saw the wave of destruction she left behind her, and she made a point of figuring out how to behave in a way that didn’t destroy the people with whom she shared the planet. I don’t know how long it took for her to be motivated to do that …. But I don’t think she was particularly young. I would think it would depend on how quickly one tires of burning through relationships ... and/or if relationships even matter to the person at all.


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