Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Rita Walden is a depressed middle-aged New Yorker. Always tired, Rita is prone to nightmares, and when she does dream more pleasant thoughts, they are of her childhood on the family farm. In her mind, she settled for second best when she married her optometrist husband, Harry, as she still thinks about what life would have been like with the older farm-boy on whom she had a crush at age 12½. She is constantly bickering with her mother, her sister Betty and her grown-up daughter Anna, who has issues of her own. Rita is also estranged from her son Bobby, upon whom she is in denial about his homosexual-orientation. After Rita's mother dies suddenly, Rita is on the verge of a nervous breakdown in dealing with her mother's estate, especially when the family talks about selling her beloved farm which she still intends on passing on to Bobby. Harry thinks that a European vacation would help Rita clear her mind, with the possibility of visiting Bobby who is currently living in Amsterdam. Although Rita faces some crises on the trip, much of her thoughts do clear after seeing Harry revisit Bastogne, his first time there since his World War II battle days. Written by Huggo
