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Mother and I got along quite well in our reduced circumstances and Mother inherited a few thousand dollars from some distant relative in Seattle which improved our situation a bit financially. Just about the time of my father's death and our move to Douglas Street, Mother went through the menopause which, of course, couldn't have come at a much worse time for her and she had a pretty rough period for a year or so, being very emotionally upset and nervous about various things, particularly business matters. I guess I was too young to appreciate the situation but a Mr. Jordan, a middle-aged widower and friend of the family, began paying some attention to Mother. He was a very tall, well-proportioned man, I think maybe in insurance, always well-dressed, drove a Franklin car, was quite prosperous I think and somehow, I was impressed with the fact he was a diabetic. He seemed interested in Mother and took us on long auto rides like up to points on Lake Ontario, but nothing ever came of it ad I have a feeling that Mother was not duly taken with him, at least not in any sentimental way. Instead, Mother took an art course at the university as she had considerable talent and I still have much of her course work as well as other material to show it. She was also quite a talented writer, I thought, and I believe that had she seriously undertaken art or writing as a career when she was younger, she might well have made a go of either one. I guess there's little doubt that what talents I possess in these two fields, I inherit from her, and I likewise believe that I could have at least earned a living as either a cartoonist or a writer of some sort if I'd made a career of one or the other. But Mother never followed up the art course, taking it for only a year as I recall, and her writing efforts were very sporadic so they never amounted to anything; she didn't seem to have any drive in the writing field and she'd start projects but fail to complete them. She had her friends and her usual activities with them, which when on as usual, as well as her house-keeping duties in the apartment, and she was a great reader and my impression is that she had no great difficulty keeping busy. We attended church very regularly and I became quite active in the young people's doings such as taking part in plays that were put on to raise money. I remember that my major effort in this regard was playing the lead in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," for which, however, I failed to get a bid from any of the move producers of the day -- I don't think Hollywood was really in existence yet. I don't think Mother enjoyed cooking and we dropped into the custom of having Sunday dinner out practically every week. We'd go to church and then walk from there downtown where we'd dine at various places including the Yates, which was still very good, the Mizpah (First Baptist Church restaurant), Child's (not so good), the Homestead (not good), and the YMCA (very good). I was ashamed to be seen going into the Homestead, a restaurant near the New York Central station, and Sunday dinners there were painful to me -- the other places were okay and some, very good.