That is the whole of it and it is not a moral position, it is a practical one.

For thirty-eight years my mother was the person who told me what things meant.

I did not know that was the arrangement; that is the point of the arrangement.

And what a phone call with her does — what I have tested, twice, in the first year, in sessions afterward — is not make me angry.

It makes me start agreeing.

Within about eleven minutes of my mother’s voice I am a man who can see her side of it.

Within an hour I am a man who has been a little harsh.