Sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you with hopes for a rosy post. I’m just “cleaning out” my papers again and came across the following which is the beginning of a story I never finished, from 1-4-98, titled “Something About Ida.”

At 62, Ida was an imposing old girl, having inherited her large frame from her mother’s father and her seeming aloofness from her father. Not a very nice person, but she meant to be. She was an enigma to herself,  and others often dismissed her as being too complex and self-centered.

A woman of many talents,  she has come to believe if not totally accept that in some aspects she is irrevocably stunted. As she sees it, her task is to live a life of integrity, while allowing for her very real  and intransigent shortcomings.

At times she wonders if her view of her shortcomings is a cop out. Is her perception of her developmental hang-ups pathological or not? She grasps for an analogy when reflecting on this. Like a man carving  himself out of a block of wood: is he a block of wood with delusions of grandeur or a creative spirit working to free himself from his unconscious?