Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

The Boston Herald

Dear Abby,

I think you've been kidnapped. I think someone from the school of It's All About Me has commandeered your computer. It must be. I've been reading you since I could read, which makes me certain that you could never have written the response to "Trying to Do the Right Thing" in last Friday's paper. Can we talk about this? What's happening in Los Angeles? Are you at the controls or have you been replaced? Or is it that you've been in L.A. so long that the Me, Myself and I culture has finally worn off on you, too?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone else has slipped into your chair, because the you I've come to know would have never told a 34-year-old ingrate of a woman that privacy is essential to her marriage, nevermind about her 76-year-old mother and 9-year-old son.

Remember the letter? "I'm a 34-year-old mother of four kids, ages 17 to 6. My 9-year-old boy has been raised by my mother since he was 6 months old. I was in the middle of a divorce when he was born. I wanted to give him up for adoption but Mother would not have it. . . My dad, mother and older sister took the baby and moved away."

And raised this woman's child. Then three years ago, the dad, mom, older sister and child moved back to the neighborhood, to the same subdivision in which this 34-year-old now lives with her new husband and three kids. Then her dad died. Then her sister died. Now it's just the mother and the 9-year-old boy.

"My brothers won't allow Mother to move in with them unless she gives my son back to me, because their children are grown and gone. She said, 'Over my dead body.' Now she is asking my husband and me to sell our home so we can buy a bigger one with her."

This 76-year-old woman loves her grandson, is committed to him and won't give him up, not even for her own comfort. And why should she? She's raised him. She has been his mother. The solution is a shared house. Mother sells her home. Daughter and husband sell theirs. They pool their money and buy a duplex. Mother has one side. Daughter has the other. The 9-year-old is under one roof with his grandmother, mother and siblings. End of story. It's a done deal.

But no. Trying to Do the Right Thing apparently wants no part of her mother or of her son. "My husband and I like to have time alone," she wrote. "We can't afford to do much so we let the kids stay overnight with friends so we can have the house to ourselves. Mother told me it's wrong to have sex in the middle of the day and that I should spend all my waking hours with the kids until they're grown . . . What do you think?"

What does this imposter Dear Abby think? She thinks that the mother and grandmother living together is a "recipe for disaster," that "privacy is essential" to a marriage and that the 34-year-old "not (her italics) buy a home with her unless it is a duplex or one that includes a separate mother-in-law unit." And she says nothing about parceling out the kids for overnights.

So where is the Dear Abby who has been a moral compass for generations of Americans, who has consistently urged doing what is right over doing what is easy, who has always advised taking the high road even when the low road beckons? Where is this Abby hiding?

This Abby would have written, "Dear Trying to Do the Right Thing, Try harder. Grow up. Your mother needs you. For nine years, she's raised your son. Don't you think you owe her a little something? And what about your son? He needs his grandmother and he needs you. You have a husband and family. Your son is part of your family. You want to have sex in the middle of the day? Fine. Lock the doors and have sex. But then let your whole family in. Not just the part of it that least inconveniences you."

Abby - the real Abby - wherever you are, you need to come back.