I found reading this article fascinating, as it touched on my own memory deeply. However, my "take" is somewhat different.

I was raised in a household where sexual abuse/incest was rampant, exacerbated by the fact that this was sustained behind the facade of social acceptability. My parents were both respected professionals, my mother a physician at a time when that was unusual. Both were also raging alchoholics, and both knew no boundarys when it came to sexual acts. I would digress to go into this deeply, but I note the platform for my next comments.

My junior high and high school career was blessed with several teachers who went "out of their way" to reach out to me - via conversations, via commentary, feeback, support. I was not the classic "troubled student" - my GPA was 4.2 on a 4.0 scale - but I am sure, in retrospect, that these talanted and deeply invested educations sensed something behind my reserved demeanor. I also am sure they knew that what they could do was limited to supporting me in the venue of the classroom and selected extracurricular activities. As I remnisce, NONE of these folks actually ever spent time with me solo behind closed doors, none of them gave me rides home, nor did anyone of them ever touch me. Had they, I am sure I would have been triggered all over the place and it might well have utterly destroyed the bond they worked so hard to establish. They were able to convey support, provide intellectual challenges that amused and interested me, and got me to "invest" myself in various projects that validated me, all without "solo" time and all without touching. It was possible for these passionate, deeply invested folks to reach out effectively without overstepping boundrys that were, even then ('60's) quite well-defined. I remember their support fondly, with deep gratitude, as the one source of lightness in an otherwise utterly bleak childhood, from which I escaped by fleeing to college, never to return to my parents' home.

The author's patent sentimentalism touches on the world of projection and fantasy, and I note that there is nothing in the emergence of more clear definition of boundary/behavior that would prohibit her schoolgirl crush, nor, I suppose, are teachers forbidden a rich fantasy life. However, it is the enactment of fantasy that can become so very destructive; as a part-time faculty member, I have been well-aware of several nubile young sophomores who would have jumped at "private time"; my policy of never meeting with students in a closed room was as much a protection for me as for them, frankly. They were entitled to their fantasy life, but it was my role to stick to the teaching. I am not sure, if I follow the tenuous thinking of the author, what educative mission I would have promoted by providing these young women with the opportunity to render their fantasy more "real" because they had a private appointment with me.............Certainly, they are entitled to their transferent feelings of affection as they strive for an adult awareness; certainly I was under no obligation to respond save by maintaining, in meticulous fashion, an appropriate awareness of our functional interaction.

I would love for us all to live in a culture where "safe touch" was freely offered and freely shared; our western culture hardly promotes that as a basis for communciaton, particularly in same-gender constructs. That said, until we, as a culture can begin to understand the full impact and implications of physical communication, physical communication where there is an imbalance of power risks a great deal of misconstruance.

The Mom sounds like a walking wounded, and Cary touched on the core of what may be her issue - for decades, her job was clear, that of maintaining the semblance of a "safe" household in the face of an emotionally absent father. Now that Dad's sober and the nest is empty, she has no role. Indeed, her husband's sobriety may attack the core of her own self-image as someone who copes.

Freqeuntly, in dysfunctonal family settings, one spouse becomes entirely codependenly wrapped around the dysfuncitonality of the other; when the dysfunction goes away (even partially, as I suspect this guy may well be, as one other correspondent noted, a "dry drunk") so does her role.

So what can the kids do? Nothing, if Mom doesn't wanna. They could move forward with greater compassion and understanding, and might configure time with their mother that involved more than her funcitoning as a freebie babysitter. Social night out, dinner and a movie, informal family get-togethers - get her in some social context so that she has some opportunity to redefine who she is. That works, of course, only if they actually value their mother's time intrinsically; it ain't gonna work if they don't enjoy spending time with her.

Mom just might benefit from CODA (CoDependants' Anonymous) or Al-Anon, and the kids might just benefit from racking up a few ACOA meeting (Adult Children of Alchoholics). For LW to assume that just because daddy's now sober as a judge that things are hunky-dory and all can be forgiven and forgot is naieve. She has her own work to do, as do her sisters, as does Mom. If dad wants do do more work, he can join the party - or not.