“I must have been born feeling guilty,” Pat said.
I paused, my cup of mocha coffee halfway to my mouth. “Why do you say that?”
Pat shook her head, staring into her hot chocolate. “I just do. Maybe it was how I was raised. I was the youngest of five children, sort of a late-in-life post script, and the older ones were so perfect, according to Mom and Dad. I knew for a fact how imperfect I was, so I felt guilty that I didn’t measure up.”
I laughed and immediately was sorry that I had. “Birth order–youngest, always looking up to others. That’s no reason for you to feel guilty. I was an only but I didn’t feel guilty about it.”
“That’s an unrealistic expectation,” Jackie the philosopher said, narrowing her eyes as she stared at Pat. “You know that guilt is not a happy state of affairs to live with.”
“Boy, do I know that!” Pat said. “Sometimes I can’t sleep at night, thinking of all the things I’ve said and done that I shouldn’t have, or of the things I should have said and done but didn’t.”
I covered Pat’s hand with my own. “I understand that. I do the same thing.”
Jackie shook her head. “When I start to feel like that, I just get out of bed, drink a cup of hot chocolate, take an aspirin, and read a good book.”
I signaled Janie, Grandy’s waitress and a friend of ours, to bring another round of drinks. “Pat, this probably won’t help, but I think you have a highly developed sensitivity. You’re the one who’s sure old houses are haunted. You are the first to take in homeless animals and when someone is in trouble, you’re the first person on the scene trying to help. Maybe your guilt feelings are an extension of sympathy for others.”
“Probably so,” Jackie said, “but she shouldn’t do all this just to keep from feeling guilty.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Actually, it does make me feel better,” Pat said. “I had never thought that I was helping myself when I helped somebody else.”
Jackie grinned. “We are all pretty imperfect people. Some of us just keep our deficiencies covered up. That’s not always good either.”
I pretended to be shocked. “Jackie! Do you mean that you actually have deficiencies?”
Jackie threw a paper napkin at me and Pat giggled.
“Here, here,” Janie said, bringing our coffee and hot chocolate. “We’ll have no violence in here.”
“We’re in a therapy session,” I told her. “Sometimes they get out of hand.”
Pat laughed and we all joined in. “There’s one thing I know for sure,” she said. “A talk with you two and a hot drink always makes me feel better. You’re pretty wise people.”
Janie turned to go. “I could have told you that,” she said. “You’re all in here, aren’t you? Proof positive.”
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