You know, sometimes I wish we could read the unedited letters Prudie gets (if they’re real) because LW 1 sounds like it could have been written by someone I knew in high school. Her dad died when she was really young (3 if I recall), which left her and her mom with a huge life insurance payout. Her mom gave up her job to raise her kid alone, the end result was that her daughter pretty much was her life. As far as I know she never hit on any of my friend’s boyfriends (in such a small town I’d have probably heard about that) but if they had a single dad, well, game on. She’d hang out at the mall with us, go shopping with us, try on the same outfits as us, etc. I remember standing in the kitchen with my friend and her mom walking in with a really cute top on and some jeans. My friend was not happy as both the jeans and the top were hers. Yeah, there were some serious boundary issues in that house. As far as I know, she never had anything that was strictly her own. She never spoke badly about her mom, though, even defending her at times, saying how hard it’d been for her mom after her dad died.

After high school she went to the local University, where her mom pretty much became a fixture of campus life there too. She later on went to work for an international company, a job that required her to travel a lot. She met her husband while at a conference, settling down several hours away from where we grew up, close enough to visit but far enough to provide her with the boundaries she couldn’t put up herself. Reading this letter, I wonder if her mom hasn’t moved into the same town, you know, just to be close to the grandkids. The way LW1 talks about “her name” and “her church” and “her family” makes me think I need to catch up with an old friend.