It was a long pull & I had no help from the person I hoped to have help from. (Dana gave me this, though. Dana pulled me through these two terrible years—kept me alive.) And no help from my usual sources of help—solitude & creative writing. There was no time for either. The only time I had left over went to the children or to C. in various ways. The book—or talking over plans or struggling to make him understand a little. He was being creative in these years; I was not—at least not in a way I could show. There was no flower for me to show. But I think there will be sometime.
At least, I have gained a steadiness & an ability to walk my tightropes & even gaily! This is much & reflects itself in the children—in the even tenor of our life now—this is enough.
But the banked bitterness remains. What to do with the bitterness? God—will you take it? Or must I always carry it—this bitter burden? I can perhaps dissect it—& understand it—then it evaporates a little. Bitterness & jealousy are allied & they, too, are voices to be listened to & to learn from. They are not to be dismissed or trampled down. Listen, listen. Listen deeply & courageously!
“Jealousy”—I once wrote—“is the unlived life in you crying out to be spent.” This I believe to be deeply true & deeply true in this situation. C. has written HIS book. And this is His book no matter how much of me is in it—it is his book. He has put all of himself into it. Personality—emotions—thought—hours of work. He has written HIS book & I have never written mine. I know this. And I also know that it is chiefly my own traits of character—my cowardice—my inhibitions—my laziness—my lack of centeredness & sureness—my unhappiness & gropings—that have kept me from writing it. (I do not know that it will ever be written now.) But also the ground has not been propitious for its growing. The struggles to keep life—marriage—children afloat have not left enough extra for me to write with. And C., though he has often tried to (& sincerely), has not—consciously or unconsciously—made it easier.
Here are some of the roots of bitterness—It is really no one’s fault. Now that I am freer—a little—how much I wish I had years of life ahead of me—how I wish I were Judy—just starting out—with my eyes open & my heart open!
[From a letter to Alan Valentine]
Plane, Portland to New York
Thursday evening, [September?] 1953
Already it is all so far away, and yet it is there too: a great, banked-up fire warming one hiddenly.
When we got to the thoroughfare, I saw the gray beach wagon ahead of us. Were you buying cat food? Were you in the door of Waterman’s? Were you in the “Herreschaft” (spelling?) we passed beyond the Sugar Loaves? I could not tell. I watched the white sail out of sight, a very bright spark of light against the dark shores. And I found myself praying for you chiefly and deeply. (Surprisingly, I haven’t prayed so literally for a long time), and it wasn’t a selfish prayer either, for you in your life—all parts of your life: your marriage, your children, your work, for you alone in the midst of them, like the man alone in the sailboat out there in the bay. I felt you very alone at that moment. And I too.
I sat looking backwards the whole way—at the extravagant fling of the White Islands disappearing behind me where we were yesterday. Then Rockland Harbor, and I had to look forward. One must. I go into my life much strengthened. It will be very absorbing, very busy and occupying at first: distracting, uncontemplative, children’s problems, schedules, and the restlessness of the last few days before C. goes off on a trip. I will be immersed in it all in a few minutes. So I want, while I am still attached to Maine, to the White Islands and Cabot’s Cove, to say a little of all I thought last night.
Many of my thoughts were of your moving explanation—your understanding of the need for creativity in Lucia’s life. You are right, and I was very moved by your perception of this and your expression of it: the generosity and fairness in this, as well as perception. You convinced me of much in that moment: that you were doing right, and that you would be able to do it, and the kind of person you were, and many other things.
I know myself how one fills creative hungers often with the next-best things (lame ducks* or flower arranging) when one can’t get the time or energy or peace for the poem or the book. We land—goodbye!
Friday p.m., Scott’s Cove
As for the more long-term advice, I find it difficult to say anything, except to be deeply touched and also strengthened. It seems, at times like this, so completely unreal as to be fantastic, and I am always able, in the good times, not to see what I do not want to see. Blindly. It is a characteristic that irritates me when I see it in my mother, and I know on many occasions it has irritated C. Perhaps it is a feminine characteristic, this ostrich gesture that we instinctively feel is self-preserving.
I have thought of something else, too, you said at Cabot’s Cove. If I were in trouble. And I remember you at Hopewell.† And that is a great fire at my back—no, something that is more than warmth, sustaining the earth at one’s back.
Saturday morning, sitting in the trailer
I feel now that C. and I pull much more together, most of the time, for the children. I think what children resent is not so much discipline, or even temper, as the sense that they are not being looked at as individuals (with love and understanding, that is), but that they are being treated as battlefields for two opposing ways of life: as posts to hang principles on, as symbols of suffering (“I cannot bear to have my children go through what I went through,” etc.), as projections of either side’s pet belief or unfulfilled dream, as compensations for parents’ failures, etc. We are always trying to make a Custer’s Last Stand out of our children. At least, I have done all of those things. Perhaps still do. But I am a little more aware of what I do, which takes the inflammable quality out of it somehow, for it lessens the inflammable quality of C.’s reaction.
In other words (I am thinking out loud to you), every time you use a person as a thing—treat them without love, use them for your own ends—they perceive and resent it. Though the same thing may be done with another motive and be accepted. The essence is not in the act but in the motive. Am I oversimplifying? I used my children just as much as C., but for different ends. But the using of them was wrong—is always wrong.
It takes so long to learn how to love, to treat one’s children with love, from love. And this doesn’t rule out anger, indignation, etc., as long as this is an expression of love. And children know the difference. Rilke says it takes a whole lifetime to learn to love, and he is right, I think—a lot righter than Kinsey!
Evening, sitting up in bed
I did not mail this, remembering it would have a Darien postmark on it. I shall get it to New York by some means, or Stamford. I have just reread your last two letters, so that everything seems close and vivid again. (It seems so unbelievable and unreal at times.) Now I must go to sleep.
Sunday morning, trailer
I did not, alas. Perhaps it was a mistake to read the letters. But this morning it is, thank God, cool and cloudy with a promise of rain in the air. I have watered my few sprigs of mint and the lone bunch of chives (for vichyssoise!), and the rosebush and the two patches of chrysanthemums, and a small Japanese maple and one dogwood. I weigh carefully the relative value and need of the applicants for my largess, like the head of the World Bank!
I must write to the children and then take this to the post office. It is so good to be alone and quiet, even in the heat. I pray that C. will not come home until I have had a little time to be quiet and digest all this. I cannot work yet; I cannot get to “The Shells,” or to poems. Tomorrow? Next week? How about you? Are you building walls? How much peace and companionship there is, in this kind of work. I think of you as I water the dogwoods, as I swim, as—as—as——Oh my dear …
[January/February 1954]
Dear Barbara,*
This has been a beautiful weekend—sunny and blowy, March-like. Lying in bed this morning, I heard for the first time the turtledove and found the first snowdrops pushing through
the dead oak leaves on my way to the little house on the hill. I have wished so much that you and Janey† and your father could have been here this weekend instead of last for I feel so much more like myself and we could have sat in the sun and talked. However, it was a blessing to have you last week and I have thought about it a lot. I have had time to think because I have been quieter than usual.
I was much moved and pleased by what you told me of Jon reading the clouds (“for being sensitive to the clouds”) on your face, in your mind. You must encourage him in this, teach him to be a good weatherman, for not only will he understand you better, but through you all people, and feel closer to them and know better how to help them and contribute to them. I was also terribly pleased to hear about his bad ski day and how you weathered it and that Jon had the perception to recognize and the openness to say what you had done for him.
I liked your admitting—though gaily enough—that you were sometimes quite scared, or astonished and wondering, of what you were doing in getting married. I don’t think anyone with any imagination or sensitivity ever got married without feeling that: a kind of tremendousness and awe before this new and utterly unpredictable stage in life. Is one prepared for it, one thinks, one wonders? Of course not, how could one be prepared for it! Completely, that is.
It is like standing on the top of a new ski trail, waiting to take off, wondering what you’ll meet on the way down, wondering if you’ll make it all right and feeling a bit trembly in the knees! No one can really tell you what it’s like, because no one knows—certainly not the person at your side. Not even the ones who have gone before, because it’s different for each person. It is one of those moments when you have to make the best decision you can from that particular point (always a blind one) in time. No one can do more than this (maybe a bounce or two on the knees and start humming the “Blue Danube”!*)
Perhaps Jon is scared too, scared that he won’t be able to make you happy, or scared he can’t live up to the wonderful person you are, or scared he won’t live up to the wonderful person he hopes you think he is! Well, he doesn’t sound scared. I don’t know. He just seems eager for March 20th.
I have been rereading Thornton Wilder’s wonderful play Our Town, the Love and Marriage Act, which made me laugh and cry. He describes so well the universal feeling of parents thinking their children aren’t old enough to get married and the children themselves rushing to get married and at the last minute feeling this inevitable hesitation before such a new step in growth and life, which seems to catapult you down the ski-slide (“You know how it is: you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions; then whisssh! You’re seventy—you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand meals with you!”)
And I loved the description of the old doctor on his wedding morning (I felt rather like this myself!): “I was the scaredest young fella in the state of New Hampshire. I thought I’d made a mistake for sure. And when I saw you comin’ down that aisle I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, but the only trouble was that I’d never seen you before. There I was in the Congregational church marryin’ a total stranger!”
Well, Barbara, this is long enough. Don’t bother to answer. You are going to be pretty busy these next weeks. I only wanted to send you my thoughts and my love, which go to you many times a day silently.
We were all so happy to have you here and all send their love. You will be interested to know what Anne announced at breakfast the other day. “Scott has changed his mind about not getting married. He is going to marry a female turtle!”
Love,
AML
[From a letter to Alan Valentine]
Little House*
Tuesday morning, January 26th, 1954
When C. and I got back last night from his enormous dinner (Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, Guggenheim Medal: reception speech, thousands of people), I have rarely felt so prostrated. Perhaps I can’t take those dinners any more. Perhaps the role I have to play, and the confusion and conflict inside contrasted to the Rosy Glow outside, is too much for me. I am exhausted. However, it was all a colossal success.
Wednesday morning
Con said, quoting someone once: “Each was the other’s natural habitat.” I thought about it coming home in the train. The sudden feeling of loss, of emptiness: not tragedy or despair, simply loss of what should be there, lack of continuity, as if one had been dropped off into space. As if one had been walking down a familiar road and it had stopped suddenly. Where is it? The path was so plain, so simple, so familiar, leading home. Why did it stop?
The children flung their arms about me—or Reeve did—as I came in the door. I stopped Land prodding Scott upstairs to bed with a bamboo pole, talked to Anne about her Halloween costume, tucked three children in bed, made myself some tomato soup, two pieces of toast, another glass of sherry and the rest of the canned grapefruit Anne had left. Then sat on my bed and ate it.
As I got ready for bed, I looked at myself in the mirror and was surprised at the face that looked back at me, so much prettier than that usual everyday face! Like a girl! Goodness, how strange!
Wednesday night, sitting up in bed
… and what is this strange world I am walking in? (Can you realize how strange, how young, how like a child I feel it in?) It is the new world of adult relationship with a subtle and beautiful and mature mind. Yes, I mean mind, or perhaps spirit. The whole living, growing, aware, questing, struggling with problems, thinking, weighing, enjoying, appreciating person. Sitting here tonight, I can realize how rare an experience that is, to share thought, feeling, experience with someone like that, at one’s own level of growth. I am shy sometimes at it, and new at it, and lack faith, and wonder if I have been greedy or grasping, bold or crude, or too frightened.
Tuesday morning
I meant to write you about Saturday evening, the day of the storm, high tides, floods, etc. We were cut off all day but in the late afternoon the mail man got through. And I had a goodly batch, and felt very gay, and put on a wide skirt and had sherry for supper (alone with the children). I put on Les Trois Cloches during the meal, and afterwards the children (they catching my mood) laid a fire, rolled up the rugs and danced wildly all evening, stopping only for occasional orange juice and roasted chestnuts.…
Little House
March 29th, 1954 [DIARY]
These last two months I have had two—really three—big experiences. My illness and all that it illuminated for me. And Jon and B.’s wedding, followed by the days in Detroit with the frail, emaciated, hardly living Mrs. L.* All of it unwritten. I should have written the illness after I came back from the hospital instead of trying to finish up “The Shells” (always behind!) while I was convalescing. Now it seems too far away and even the joy & beauty of the wedding is now somewhat blurred by the dark veil of the sadness of Detroit. Aging people & fading strength—everything darkening, dying, decaying in that old house!
But now—even at the expense of “The Shells”—I feel I must stop & write something about these weeks—in order that I may learn from them, in order that they not be wasted.
The first two weeks of February were spent on “The Shells”—working hard & talking to Mina† about them. Very exciting & good criticism & so encouraging. Somewhat interrupted by diarrhea & no appetite & some faint signs of nausea. I was already ill—with another pregnancy‡—and did not know it. We set off for the Laurentians & our weekend—our week of skiing with the Robbinses & children—on February 13th, C. & I. Although I was wretched I was sure it was just nervous indigestion & would disappear once we were off. (That should teach me!)
It didn’t disappear but grew increasingly worse. At the end of our ten hours’ drive to Montreal we turned up at the Cygne Motel & I fell into bed with my heat pad, taking only tea made with tap-water. We went on in the a.m. to Mont Tremblant—four hours or so & found eventually a little cabin. It would have been perfect if I had been well
. Four double decker cots in the downstairs room—opening into a little kitchen & two rooms up a ladder-like staircase—under the eaves.
As it was, I fell into one of the cots downstairs, without even making it up. Heat pad & Luminol—clear tea with sugar. I decided to stay in bed for twenty-four hours & see if I could clear it up—still thinking it was a “bug.” It became, however, increasingly worse—nausea—vomiting—unable to digest anything. And I became very weak (simply from lack of nourishment & dehydration). I still didn’t know why.
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Page 11