In The Country Of The

Dad And I Did Not Care At All For Your Story In The New Yorker … [i]t Does Seem, Dear, That This Gloomy Kind Of Story Is What All You Young People Think About These Days. Why Don't You Write Something To Cheer People Up?

She Had Taken To Wondering Lately, During These Swift-counted Years, What Had Been Done With All Those Wasted Summer Days; How Could She Have Spent Them So Wantonly? I Am Foolish, She Told Herself Early Every Summer, I Am Very Foolish; I Am Grown Up Now And Know The Values Of Things. Nothing Is Ever Really Wasted, She Believed Sensibly, Even One's Childhood, And Then Each Year, One Summer Morning, The Warm Wind Would Come Down The City Street Where She Walked And She Would Be Touched With The Little Cold Thought: I Have Let More Time Go By.

It Was One Of Those Winter Days That Suddenly Dream Of Spring, When The Sky Is Blue And Soft And Clear, And The Wind Has Dropped Its Voice And Whispers Instead Of Screaming, And The Sun Is Out And The Trees Look Surprised, And Over Everything There Is The Faintest, Palest Tint Of Green.

It Has Long Been My Belief That In Times Of Great Stress, Such As A 4-day Vacation, The Thin Veneer Of Family Wears Off Almost At Once, And We Are Revealed In Our True Personalities.

Fate Intervened. Some Of Us, That Day, She Led Inexorably Through The Gates Of Death. Some Of Us, Innocent And Unsuspecting, Took, Unwillingly, That One Last Step To Oblivion. Some Of Us Took Very Little Sugar.