Cousin Lloyd came to visit

Cousin Lloyd came to see mom today, driving in from Manhattan, then getting lost on the way to the house, while Mom and Ellen fretted nervously in the kitchen, one nervous person inflaming the other.

I couldn't take it -- you could make a comedy of it if it wasn't so pathetic -- spray the kitchen w/Klonopin or Quaaludes -- so I went downstairs and read the New Yorker online. TERRIFIC article about the amazing incompetency of the Russian government in fighting peat bog fires around Moscow. Permission granted to take a break from this blogpost and read the article -- estimated time 7 minutes -- if you promise to come back. Or not. I'm not a control freak.

Lloyd is 81. The older people are, the more interesting they are. When his folks came over from the old country, their name was Krupnick but the Ellis Island person changed it to "Goldstein." But Lloyd's dad and uncle changed it again, this time to Gilden, and Gilden stuck. Lloyd's dad started his own women's apparel company called Jerry Gilden Dresses. He was very successful.

Many of these companies got their start in Cleveland. Why on earth Cleveland? Lampl was there. Bobbie Brooks. And of course Majestic Specialties, Inc., where my dad worked.

Lloyd is a retired college professor but still maintains a fairly large private practice where he sees therapy clients. I surprised him by telling him I looked him up online and saw he's a student of Trigant Burrow (b'ROE), the first group therapist in the world.

I told Lloyd I'm a group therapist and am currently running a Self-Esteem Group out of my living room on Monday nights. I told him about my last session which ran overtime b/c I was waiting for something to happen. Finally I picked on someone and the discussion exploded and we moved forward. I asked what I should do if I encounter a problem like that again.

Use the empty chair, he said.

At mom's, we put lots of our dead family members in the empty chair including my brother David who mom said would've been 50 years old. Sometimes I say hello to David when I see his picture in my house. I sort of hide it cuz I still feel so sad about his entire life.

Oh! My son Dan called me yesterday and told me he is reading my novel. He downloaded it on Kindle. He said he really liked the first chapter, "it sucked him in," he said, but the second chapter needs work. The dialogue was unrealistic. I told him I agreed w/him and thought that if an agent chooses to represent me, I'd fix it at that time.

Fix it now, he advised. This is probly why the one person who read the first 50 pages didn't want it.

Lloyd and I walked out to his car so he could bring in his suitcase. It's always nice when you're in a crowd to get one person all by himself. A tete a tete. I was stiff from sitting for so long tho I kept jumping up to refill our water glasses or whatnot. I told Lloyd I'd seen an incredible movie this morning -- Roman Polanski's debut film Knife in the Water.

I'd seen it when I was a student at Goddard College but only remembered their playing pick-up sticks. Made in 1962, each B&W frame was artfully shot. Only three people were in the movie, two very unlikable men, and an attractive woman who sometimes wore cats-eye glassses.

I'm trying to think of who I was in love with at Goddard College at that time. Oh, there were so many. I think it's asking a lot of a person to stay w/the same partner for an entire lifetime. I mean, there are just so many people to choose from. Unless you find someone and really hit it big. Even Lloyd himself had two wives. His dad had two. Sometimes you may love someone but they up and die. Chris Ray, I used to love. But he up and died about 10 years after he left me. I still wrote a poem about him.

Before I began this post, my body gave a shudder and I felt like I would explode. That's never happened before. Dyou think it had anything to do w/the imminent birth of my granddaughter?