Mothering Mario: the sadness dialogue; the diapers she couldn't change

texture · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, ~2100h, her E.T.A. office
• What: Mario, filming, asks Avril how to tell whether someone is sad; she answers with a careful clinical taxonomy (disassociation, suppression, engulfment) that — unknowingly — describes Hal, and tells the St.-Pamphile family story (event 1) as its illustration. She refuses to talk down to Mario, keeps her "oar out of Mario's health stuff," and when she over-shoots his vocabulary he tells her he "get[s] afraid" and she apologizes. The tenderest datum of her limits: "Avril couldn't change diapers." When Mario was incontinent past his early teens she "came to him in tears, he'd been seven, and explained, and apologized... She just couldn't handle diapers," asking him to assure her it didn't mean she loved him less. (Her office: doorless, all the overheads on, fleur-de-lis pennons in the corner beside a maple-leaf and a U.S. flag; age 56.)