Fight it!

“Fight it!” says my bereavement counselor.
“Every time you start feeling guilty because you like some lady-friend enjoying your company, step aside and remind yourself “that’s Hilda!”
As you all know Yr Fthfl Srvnt is a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations. Hilda was my next-door neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent when I was a child. She convinced me all men, including me, were disgusting and evil. I was about 5 or 6.
“No girl will ever like you!”
Her husband, a hot-shot RCA engineer, was probably playing around.
My Bible-beating parents were enthusiastic accomplices. I was already rebellious and of-the-Devil because I couldn’t worship my father as worthy of Jesus’ right hand. My mother mellowed as I got older, but not my father.
My bereavement counselor is supposedly helping me through the death of my wife. But we spend a lot of time discussing my childhood.
That counselor made an excellent observation: “Your wife filled a gigantic void. She liked you. Now that she’s gone you grieve that as well as her death.”
Just recently I returned to my childhood home in south Jersey. It was extremely depressing. In 1992 I made a similar trip by motorcycle. It too was extremely depressing. I cried in a diner — recalling I never had loving parents.
My siblings will dispute that, claiming I’m rebellious of course. I’m also the first-born.
A constant-reader will question dredging up my childhood again. But my counselor observed “Your wife liked you, and that offset your horrible childhood. You don’t have that any more.”
I guess I’m “fighting it.” I’m having more success with ladies than I ever expected, even the pretty ones.
Faire Hilda is spinning in her grave: 14,000 rpm, enough to power south FL.
But she and my parents marked me for life; you don’t flip-flop such a childhood.

• “Q” stands for Quincy, Hilda’s maiden-name.
• RCA is Radio Corporation of America, defunct.