Chapter 8: Travel in a Tiny World. Peggy and Gerry, both, were extremely incurious people and it shows in Chapter 8. Many events that could have had telling portrayal occur there. Yet, my mother flattens them with her bland response to everything in the world at large. Contrast this with page after page on what TC said. Ch8-CompressedEvents.html lists the standout events, each taking up no more than the period at the end of a sentence compared to the intricacy on what Peggy puts in the mouth of TC.

Peggy's statement on Singapore epitomizes how little she could reflect on anything outside herself and TC. The puzzle: If she was mentally ill, what was the illness? Being unresponsive – yes, depressed, but denying it by faking functionality in her writing – won't likely be regarded an illness. Certainly not one grabbing sympathy. Now, with her children essentially gone, Peggy's world could concentrate fully – as do the remaining chapters – on TC.

Yet, what joy there was in Peggy's life, was in these astonishingly expensive cruises, most accompanying TC, which start in this chapter. Here with Ted, Judy and TC, she is lounging in what might be the USS Rotterdam, on which TC often traveled. This would have been after I was working at Allied Research Associatesin Boston with Ted, starting in June 1961, after leaving Michigan State. Those voyages continue for as long as she could get out of bed. With her agoraphobic fears, she would never have been "outside" without Gerry, as she is here, except on one of those cruises. Three of her children hardly saw her after 1960, except when she docked in Long Beach, until the last year of her life.