"Agreed. How about the period after your husband died?"
"Still shitty, but a little less so, until I met Paul and inherited this family. Now, I'm in heaven."
"Ah, exactly."
"What do you mean by that Ah?"
"It's a theory I have."
"Doctor, talking to you is like talking to one of my children. It's like pulling a loose tooth; a not-very-loose-tooth."
"Sorry. Let me explain. The only two . . . not unpleasant times in your life are your childhood and the present. The two are merging into one. Karen's entrance into your life together with your mother's death has refocused you on those early years. As you revere those times, recollecting them in detail causes you more guilt for so abruptly abandoning that life and your mother. In Karen's case, you are the only example of normalcy she's ever known. She's thrilled to be out in the world, and she idolizes you for freeing her from the castle prison, so to speak. She is obsessed with mirroring you as a person. Thus, her fixation on the details of your growing up years."
The only word I truly heard was idolize but I tried to understand the rest of his pronouncement. "Granted, she's fixed on my childhood, sometimes to an annoying degree, but I can live with that; we're all happy aren't we? Except for this punishment problem, we haven't had too many bumps in the road."
"As guilt and punishment are at the root of both of your problems, I'm concentrating heavily on the subject. Frankly, I want to come up with a way of removing this spanking business as a form of punishment from Karen's mind, without faulting your parents for utilizing it in their household."
"Good luck. Everything else my parents did is sacrosanct in Karen's mind. Fortunately, Karen is much better behaved than I was. She hasn't done the things I did that warranted getting severely punished."
"Perhaps not, but the quarry incident would have earned you a beating, don't you think?" I had to agree.
I wanted to believe Karen would never do anything like that again but I knew she was human and fallible, like the rest of us. "I'm sure we could come up with something." My answer sounded mealy-mouthed.
"Perhaps you should be prepared to address her misadventures before they arise."
"What were some of these terrible things you did to deserve such drastic punishment as a beating?"
There he was, making my parents into ogres again. He saw the look on my face so he poured a little sugar on his question. "However, if someone was committed to the practice of spanking, for whatever reason, as it seems your parents were, they carried it off as well as it could be performed." The weasel slid around calling my parents monsters so I answered.