update

For those of you who read this, I will give you a quick update - more to come when I am actually home - there is not enough time to write now, and there is barely enough stability in my head - the last few days have been draining - but FYI:

• The professor helped me get into the house where little brother and I grew up. The lady living there gave me a tour, and then told me to make myself at home. The princess was the only one who went inside with me. She stopped in the very spot my mom died - like she just knew, and she said "This is it - this is where your mom died."

"Yes it is is," I told her.

She was almost reverent when she touched the blanket on the bed and whispered to me, "Do you think they have changed the sheets?"

• We drove through town, and though it has grown, everything I remember was exactly the same - exactly - which leads me to believe - that even though somebody once accused me of "making things sound worse than they were" - that I do indeed remember the truth.

• My uncle has the same memories I do.

• We did visit Crazy, and once Punk stopped giving her dirty looks behind her back, he warmed up to her quite a bit. "Mom," he said, "If you had not told me this would happen, I would never have believed she was who you said she was." I had basically told them that she is crazy and does not think what she did was wrong - and that she would seem like the sweetest person in the world. I was right. The professor saw it though - he saw the crazy - it is the kind of nuts that any grown-up can see . . . wonder why nobody did.