My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.
“I went to Marymount College in New York City with a lot of kids whose parents paid their way, and I wouldn't even have thought of asking my parents - they couldn't afford it, not with six kids!”