Lipton’s Journal/January 27, 1955/318

On the positive side, however, I had lunch with my mother today and she took the idea of my father quitting work very well, and the lunch was very pleasant. Again I was moved almost to tears when I spoke of what a good guy he is, and how bad I had been to him. And I thought of my sister and how the only way she is psychopathic is that she is psychopathically compassionate. One cannot tell her a sad story—a real say story, not an ersatz one—without tears welling into her eyes. And yet all the while I was talking to my mother I had the uneasy feeling that I was acting a little bit like a man who feels death is coming on and so he must get all his affairs in order. (How interesting is the double use of the word ‘affairs’ in English. Hints of the basic orgiastic desire do seem to appear everywhere.) Now a few notes.