I realize how desperate you must feel to call like that. I was myself aware of how little I could do to help, and how appalling it was that you had no one nearer than the thousands of miles that separate us to talk to.
If I had the choice of a heart transplant (a very different thing than the valve operation) and death in a normal gradual weakening, I think I would choose the natural way. But the operation they are proposing for you, if I understand you, is not in the very experimental stage of heart transplants. It has been made hundreds of times.
Once you have made the decision, you should try to accept it and feel yourself in God’s—or Nature’s—or Fate’s hands. It would be easier if you had a traditional religion to support you. I know how you feel about the usual orthodox religious comforts one is given. They aren’t strong enough to support one. If one could only pray. I have thought a great deal about petitionary prayer. At one time I rejected all prayers of intercession as crutches, but now I think what I was rejecting was the form—the semantics, the too small form, or frame, of prayers. The validity of prayers has been attested to through the ages, but it has been delineated in too small terms and language.
Perhaps, I now feel, prayer opens the heart and connects us with some stream of compassion that feeds us and the world. It may not be answered literally, but I begin to feel it connects us to a life current. There are other ways of being connected with the life current: being with people you love, seeing the beauty of a flying bird or a flaming tree, or hearing music—feeling a sudden overwhelming gratitude for beauty and kindness or communication. One says thanks, and one’s heart is suddenly infused again with the life current. Something is “answered.”
I think there are also other ways to be calmed, strengthened, or more connected to the beneficent forces in the universe. The Eastern religions have taught their believers certain techniques. (Not so different from the Christian, except in language and form.) They preach quiet solitude, self-communion, and a kind of withdrawing from the battle of I-I-I. If you can stop the squirrel cage of the mind from going round and round, you can hear something else besides your own fears and worries. Even if you stop it by some artificial means, like sitting still and concentrating on your breathing. (I have tried it and it is calming.) You can count the breaths to stop yourself from thinking. (“One, two, three” as you breathe in, “one, two, three” as you breathe out.) Just that little recess from the squirrel cage helps, if you can do it two or three times a day. The few times I have felt close to death—once in a hospital—I have practiced this kind of breathing and quieting of the mind and it helps.
When I was afraid in an airplane, I used to make a kind of summing up: “No, I don’t want to die. I would like to live longer for X, for Y, for Z, but I have lived a good life. I have done what I could. If we are here for some purpose (and I think we are), perhaps my purpose is over. I will accept that.” And then some calm came to me.
We do not know what happens after death. To use a humble symbol, the electricity is still there even when the bulb is turned off. What happens to this force, this spirit that inhabits us? We don’t know, but through the ages different religions have believed in some permanence of the spirit. The Buddhists believe in one kind of return. The Hindus believe in reincarnation, which I find more acceptable than the too literal Christian or Mohammedan heavens. I don’t know, but I have really thought a great deal about death and believe—as the Hindus, the Buddhists, and many Christians, as well as a great delver into the subconscious like Jung—that the last third of life should be a preparation for death, or for freeing of the spirit. Protestants seem to me singularly negative in preparing one for the next step, whereas the Eastern religions pay a great deal of attention to this period of letting go. (Huxley, of course, was influenced by them also.)
I must let this go—I didn’t mean it to get so long and philosophical. I don’t think this is the moment for you to work out your philosophy of life and death. Just try to live from day to day as much as possible and experiment a little on techniques to still the squirrel cage of your fears and your mind. You might find you could get connected to the current of life. Many people love you and want to help you. Let them. Don’t argue with their words. Accept their love and their help.
Much love, Ruth, and many thoughts (I do better on paper than over the telephone).
Anne
Chalet Planorbe*
July 10th, 1970
Dear Helen [Wolff],
I am here, back in Switzerland, and begin to feel rooted again in this beautiful landscape after three happy days with Ansy and her husband and child in Paris. The weather, after a cold start, is now hot July weather, and I do hope you are having the same sort of weather in Chilmark.
The first week was not easy. CAL was here (met me, which was nice), but could only stay two nights and a day before going back to the U.S. and then on to the Philippines. He is very anxious for me to get through with the reading of my wartime diaries, which I won’t do in the mornings but only in the afternoons. Even so, it is rather upsetting to read them and absorbs one in another time. It is too personal.
Sometime, we must talk very fully and frankly about this project† which I feel, as you do, should be made a secondary one. I’m not really against it but the timing I think is touchy. I don’t think this is a problem you have to write back about—when we meet we can talk about it. In the meantime, I intend to concentrate on the middle-aged book.
It is always a little hard to settle down to this quiet life after a rather hectic spring, and this summer I am without my little dog, who got lost a week or so before I left home (when visiting Reeve in Vermont) and hasn’t been heard from since. It is absurd to let it bother one so much, but I find it very different living alone here with a dog and simply living alone. I miss him very much, especially here.
However, there are lots of birds and cats and the beautiful woods to walk in.… And one is fed by the country and the beauty all around. Also, of course, there are friends I can see. And you who live alone all the time, how do you do it? You do so magnificently.
I hope Chilmark is rewarding this year.
Much love to you—
Anne
Hawaii
January 21st, 1971
D.D.
It was so good to hear from you. I feel dropped out of the world. This is the most isolated place on earth: 35–45 minutes from the nearest village over a very bad road often washed out by the rains. It rained steadily the first week we were here—not only rain—driving storm, howling winds, and floods rushing down our slopes.
The house was not really finished and no drainage had been done around it at all, though CAL had warned both architect and contractor about it. Two inches of water, mud, and leaves came through our ground floor before we arrived and would have come again, after our arrival, had not CAL rushed out the first morning with a pail (our only implement) and dug out a channel and collected mud to make a dam in front of the back door. I patted up a mud dam while he dug trenches to channel the water around, not through, our house. Not only was there no drainage, but they had not made a rock bottom road before building the house, but just come in by Jeep over the slopes. Now the rainy season is here (and it is!), the slopes are a mass of rutted mud and washed-out gullies which actually channel the rain spillage of the mountain above us directly into our house! Also, of course, the roof leaks in spots (in the cloudbursts), and the ground floor tiles have been badly put in (spaces between the tiles not filled up so a grid effect results) which tends to collect dirt, sand, ants, and crumbs, impossible to sweep out.
Our first days were spent battling with the elements. C. borrowed a spade and dug trenches around the house to channel the by now three or four streams rushing downhill at us. I struggled with the wild inhabitants of our house who, to get out of the rain, no doubt, have sought shelter with us: ants, spiders, lizards, rats and mice. (I don’t mind spiders and lizards but rats and mice give me nightmares and ants crawling over everything
drive me batty.) However, we have set out poison and I spray everything and put all food in the icebox. The last thing I do at night is to spray under the bed and brush ants out of it before I climb in!
The car is now up on the “main” road and I slosh up to it in rubber boots and drive to the local store in Hana where, in a clutter of Japanese, Hawaiian and American goods, one can find all kinds of things including wine and vermouth—thank God!
CAL has now gone off for two weeks, making me furious at first. But I think it was really necessary and he didn’t want to go. And, fortunately, the weather has now cleared. Yesterday, my first day alone, I washed all my underwear and hung it out on the balcony, burned the garbage and swept the floors (sweeping up an enormous dead rat under the sink!), put a load of damp dirty towels through the washer, washed my hair (perhaps like the song in South Pacific, washing “that man right out of my hair”!). And I feel much better.
Must run now, to town, with this—to do errands and some for my neighbor Mary Tay Pryor, who is an angel and a great help and comfort. It is going to take years to get this place in shape. A kind of equivalent to the Mexican mañana fever exists on this island. There are few (or no) good workmen or craftsmen or foremen or architects, and Honolulu is fifty miles away by small plane that doesn’t come in bad weather.* You have to be right on the spot to see that things are done right, and my guess is we’ll be here all of February at least.
I go to town every other day with lists of household necessities which I ferret out of the Japanese-Hawaiian general store. I couldn’t buy a covered slop bucket, but could get a covered plastic diaper pail (pink!) which I’m using for garbage! However I rather enjoy that store. It’s a real obstacle race to find anything, and everyone is so helpful and smiling, full of Hawaiians in bare feet and American hippies “like-wise,” and a few elegant tourists from the expensively simple hotel, in shorts and sandals.
However, I am not as gloomy as I sound. On a beautiful day (and today and yesterday were really beautiful), it is as clear and sparkling as a perfect summer day in Switzerland. (I still prefer Switzerland!)
And who knows, I may turn Hawaiian after all. “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”
Must run. Many thoughts, love—what fun it would be—will be?—when you visit us here, after we’re organized!
A.
Conn.
Tuesday, April 27th, 1971
Dear C.,
I am not sure this will reach you but I’m sending it to Maui on the chance that you’ll stop there on your way home from Hong Kong. Anyway, it will clarify me to write it out. I have been writing letters or talking to you in my mind ever since yesterday morning—was it?—when I talked to you on the telephone from Hong Kong.
It was certainly startling to have a call from Hong Kong, and even more startling to have you propose, saying it was “practically a presidential order,” my going to the Philippines this May! (It was this May, wasn’t it? You weren’t by any chance talking about next May?) As you gathered, I feel it is next to impossible to go—certainly horribly difficult and inconvenient.
I would like to go with you to the Philippines sometime. I’d like to meet President and Mrs. Marcos, and Manuel Elizalde,* especially. Also, simply from what you’ve told me about it, I’d like to see the native tribes too, and I know that is an experience that can’t wait too long (either from their point of view—or mine. The older I get, the harder it may be to do physically). I am so—this is the most important—touched that you want me to come, that you want to show me a new part of the world and to open up to me, as you have many times before, a totally new experience. I am grateful for this, deep down underneath, even though I object, complain, hold back, etc. So you see, I’d be coming for you—not on a “presidential order.” (It’s not my president, anyway.)
But really, it isn’t easy—it isn’t fair—to change your plans overnight. You don’t tell me ahead of time what your plans are: where you are going and how long you’ll be away, when you’ll be back, etc. I don’t mind actually; I know that’s the way you live and must live. But I can’t, on the other hand, sit around and wait for you and make no plans. I must go ahead and lead my life on the basis that you aren’t there or that you are leading your own life unpredictably as far as I am concerned. So I make my plans.
I now have plans for May. These plans vary in importance, but they are not to be tossed over by a telephone call, even from Hong Kong—or a presidential order! I have planned to go over the first clean draft of Volume I of my Diaries and Letters and to write a first draft of the introduction to this before I take off to Europe. I have written Ansy I would come over whenever she wanted me, to be there around the time of her baby’s birth. Julien may take off soon after the birth and she may be counting on me. Reeve is also starting a baby (due in November), is feeling somewhat unsteady and I would like to be around if possible, to see her again, give her advice, talk to her, etc.
I have told the Monastery of Regina Laudis* that I would come again to their seminar—May 30th through June 3rd. I have told DWM and his wife† that I would like to have them for the night of June 13th. (He will be looking for letters and pictures in his files the next week.) I have, of course, also written Smith and Amherst about pictures (as well as Con and DWM), saying we might come up.
I should see Marboch the end of May or early June for the pre-summer dental work. (I waited too long, he said, the last time.) Krissie is—or may be—coming east to look at colleges. She will go by herself to Northampton and possibly others, but I would like to see her en route.
Some of these plans could, of course, be changed. But it does jam up the spring or summer. I don’t do things well when I’m under pressure and I don’t travel well across time zones. I wish I did. It takes me at least a week to recover from a trip to the West Coast or Europe. Worse for Hawaii or the Philippines. Rushing things doesn’t work for me. I can’t appreciate anything after a long trip.
I have another proposal: can’t we go to the Philippines next January? (From Hawaii.) The trip would then be broken—both going to the Philippines and returning to Hawaii—not as long as a trip.
The fall is not good because Reeve really wants me in Peacham in November for her baby’s birth. (Richard wants me too!) We might spend Christmas with them in Vermont and then go to the Philippines, via Maui, in January. I also think it would be nice if Reeve and Richard and the baby came to Maui in February? I think they’d both like to, if Richard could do some photography out there. And it would be good for her.
Reeve is very happy to be having a baby, so this is really a wonderful piece of news. (I should have told you on the telephone but I was too startled.)
I will give this to Mrs. Swanson to mail and I hope you get it and will be thinking about it—positive suggestions while flying home. (You see, I’m not all negative!)
It is very beautiful here now. The trees are all in tiny buds, the forsythia blazing yellow, and daffodils coming up on our slopes. One can eat out on the terrace and the birds are singing early in the morning. The dogwood and the fruit trees are still to bloom—just showing buds. Oh, why go to the Philippines the most beautiful month of the year in Connecticut?! Think about it!
XO XO
A.
Darien
Saturday, June 12th, 1971
Dearest Ansy—
Yesterday after calling you in the hospital (I hope it was not horribly inconvenient. I did not realize there was no phone in your room and there was so much difficulty in getting you: fragments of conversation from operators—French and U.S.A.—and nurses kept leaking through; the U.S. transatlantic operator could not speak French, and the nurse who answered in the hospital had no English, and I felt that my call was really stirring up a hornets’ nest) and hearing your voice, I felt very much better. The telegram was somewhat garbled so your news about the three-and-a-half-hour labor was the first I heard of that.
I then rushed into New York for an emergency dentist’s appointment, an
d came back to find your long and magnificent letter written on the day your Constance was born! It is a marvelous description both of the baby and the labor. I am staggered by your strength and your total awareness and your articulateness. (Perhaps someday this should find its way into a book. I am going to have it copied so Reeve can read it. I wish I had read it before I had a baby! Though that seems a bit topsy-turvy.) I’m glad you had a good midwife and assistant. They sound strong and helpful, though the hospital does sound a bit off-hand (but I guess they’re not about the important moments).
Your description of the last hour and a half is superb. I can remember that feeling too, “as if I were tumbling down an endless precipice in an avalanche,” and “It was stronger than I was, and I only just got through it with my breathing,” and “It was almost unbearable, but not painful—just too strong for me.” (I know just what you mean—I felt I was the whole earth giving birth.)
I am glad you can look at your baby through the glass of the little nursery. It is such a joy to keep looking at them because one really can’t believe it and has to realize it freshly each time. It is really such a present each time they bring the baby in! I’m sorry about the after-pains. I can remember them. You don’t get them with the first baby.
I called Reeve last night, but she was out when I called, and we had to go out for supper. I left the news with Richard. She called me back this morning and I could give her the news in your letter. She was so excited and it was fun to share it. She likes it that Constance is Tuesday’s child (Reeve was too). Now, what were you? (“Fair of Face?”) I can look it up. Your father is very happy too, and full of admiration for your courage and gaiety (he read the letter), and keeps saying: “Think of Ansy with a little daughter!”
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Page 31