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improved on it. And so, as Willie stayed upstairs after Bab went to bed, I had this session with Mother ending with her sitting on the sofa making melodramatic faces, and I sitting opposite in the big chair, thinking desperately of a way to work out this 12 year old problem, and feeling as low as I have in a long time. It's solution has defied me all these years and seems no nearer now than ever. It just seems to be that age old situation of a wife and her husband's mother being incompatible by nature and nothing seems to avail a bit to bring them together. When I talk to Willie, it seems only to intensify the trouble because she thinks (and usually correctly) that Mother has been complaining to me and that makes her all the more distant. Mother claims she has done everything in her power, but it is just such incidents as that today which keep up a constant friction on Mother's side of it, and she doesn't seem to see it. The few times I have even suggested such a thing as in to [[?]] of Mother, she has flown off the handle completely and I've sworn never to do it again. And yet she's getting older, 70 next year, and will have to be with us more and more. She complains about not knowing any of our friends and yet about three quarters of the time we have them in for bridge she refuses to come down and even say good evening to them with the result no doubt they get the impression she is shunning them for some reason. Naturally, they make no effort to be nice to her when she acts that way. Mother's great trouble is being hypersensitive and keeping a chip on her shoulder all the time. One has to be ultra careful in what one says to avoid offending her. And so the problem goes on without solution. I am terribly upset over it and always have been. But I'm stumped!