In her recent piece on Salon, “Am I an alcoholic?” writer Kathleen Volk Miller describes the way her mother and her sister lost themselves in drink, contrasting this with her own decision to be in control of her booze, not the other way around.
Relationships with alcohol aside, an interesting pattern that unfolds in the piece is that each of the women becomes deeply engaged in her own quest for normalcy. For Kathleen’s mother, there were special dinners to be cooked and birthdays to be celebrated. For Kathleen’s sister, there was the apartment filled with knick-knacks, cooking tools, and framed photographs.
And for Kathleen, there is this choice: “I will keep an eye on my daughters. I will never lose count of my drinks again.”
