by Anne Sexton
love you. love you. love you. love you!
[To Alfred Sexton]
Amsterdam
Sept. 19th,
(wishful thinking? Sept. 10, 1963
Dearest Kayo,
At last! Mail! […] I WANT MAIL. I AM HOMESICK. I WISH I WERE HOME. It isn’t that Europe isn’t just wonderful … It’s just that actually Dr. Martin was right … I belong with you and away from you isn’t quite right. In fact I’m crying … I’m sitting at a table in our bedroom that overlooks a canal in Amsterdam. Sandy is sitting across from me, writing by hand, (I’M the selfish one, using a typewriter … I’m used to the machine now and like it) I am even drinking a martini (from the bottle your mother gave Sandy). It is warm, of course and I hold my nose to drink it. We had a drink out of it in France one night (with ice then) and never thought of it since. Nothing but wine or beer since so I guess I’m not an alcoholic!… I guess I’m sad because I was hoping for letters from you and there they are sitting in Brussels! Gosh oh gosh. Me button. Me sad. And maybe even the letters I got made me even more homesick. Your voice is so clear in my head […] and then I think of the rooms in the house and oh. It is worse (and in a way better) than when you were in the service. Worse because I know just what it is I miss and belong to … better because we have made a home, an “our place” and there is no question of its stability. But oh, I miss it. Oh! It is just now sinking in. Maybe Martin was right … much better for a month with Sandy and a month with you. Oh! Oh! If I acted on impulse I’d leave tomorrow! For HOME! YOU! YOU! […]
I worry that you are going to take Maxine out to dinner and that you will kiss her. Please don’t kiss her, just as a special favor to me. I know a kiss doesn’t mean anything … but if you do kiss anyone it should be strangers, not my best friend. See … I’m jealous (but that’s no news) … I’m glad if you go out with her … but please, Kayo … (it is silly for me to beg. It is just my mood and it isn’t the martini … perhaps might be time of month. I forget. Nothing has happened anyway. Am I overdue? I guess not. I wish I were pregnant and then I could come home.) Enough! I just miss you terribly and I feel lonely for my home and my husband and my children. It reminds me of camp … There was lots to do at camp but I wanted to be home. Well I’ve been in Europe for 2 weeks and have loved it, now I want to go home … though there’s lots to do … I’m homesick. […]
While I have written it has gotten dark out. Soon we will go out into the city that Anne Frank could never go out into where she stayed for four years in her one room listening for the tread of the Nazis. And they came. She is for me the Joan De Arc of Amsterdam. […]
So this is Amsterdam … a lovely city … and I feel like Anne Frank not Anne Sexton … I want to be home. And so did she. Tell El I haven’t written a poem about lost luggage yet … but will I hope. […] Well, honey, we sure do worry about each other. I guess we need to be together and next time an “opportunity” happens I’m going to say to hell with it and take the opportunity of staying with the man I love. But, I’ll stay on with this. I’m stubborn and stay I will. If I started I’d better finish. And I don’t feel sick, just awfully homesick … it really just caught up with me today … in the worst way. I think I kept looking forward to Amsterdam (where the mail was) as if it were actually going to be you. I was driving toward you and now you’re not here, but thousands of miles away … Please tell your mother to keep writing as I loved her letters and all news of kids needed and wanted. Don’t have time to write her a separate letter. Please read appropriate parts of this to whoever you wish or whoever would be interested. Kayo, I even miss Clover! Please give Clover a kiss for me and tell her I’m proud that she is growing up to be a good dog (even if she did dig thro to Grants’) … Hope her tail still wags the same way in the kitchen at night when you walk through. Can’t imagine her being big enough to bark to be let out at 11:00 P.M. Love to think of it. And really can’t get over the story of Linda’s cooking! Good for her. Tell Billie not to forget Joy in all this … (Remember that. Joy could cook too and needs to have something just as much as Linda) … Also glad Meme [family housekeeper] is happy … but what will girls do in winter without friends in to play …???? Just in the cellar or something. If Meme can’t stand some times to have friends in then I had better come home … the girls won’t like that for long … or it will put them too much with your mother which I would rather not, rather they lead almost normal lives. Are they? Aside from being “good” are they playing with friends and doing normal things. To hell with if they are neat. Are they happy? I mean in the old way? I want them to be neat but I want them to grow the way they have been … Oh hell. I worry. I’m the mother and I should be home, not in Amsterdam, not away. This is all wrong … […] This isn’t normal … no wonder I’m unhappy. Oh boots. Write often as you can. Tell El Boylan to write too as her letters make me laugh.
Kayo, I love you. Please stay. Please be okay. Please pat my place on the bed next to yours. I’ll be home soon, if not sooner. Why did I let you talk me into this???!!!
Your traveling Button who will now walk somehow down the stair and out of her tears.
Anne
In Newton Lower Falls word had arrived that Anne had received a Ford Foundation grant to continue work on her new play, Tell Me Your Answer True. When Anne and Sandy picked up the mail at American Express in Amsterdam, they were jubilant; Kayo had sent the news.
[To Alfred Sexton]
[Amsterdam]
Sept. 11, Wed. night
[1963]
8:00 P.M.
Darling Boots,
I’m writing this on a cocktail table in dim light—We are at the Bali—an Indonesian restaurant to celebrate the Ford Foundation grant—and the day, time of the month (all’s well) &—and, cheer our spirits. I have a martini and I feel, once more, real—you know!—Yes?—I won’t finish this here—too noisy—only love to you at this moment—oh! How I miss and love you!—
Just a note again before I go to sleep. I am typing on the bed, the double bed where we are going to sleep tonight. We moved today to this new place and are now in new place … very tiny room with double bed, me with heating pad going … small room with no table or space but the bed. It is hard to type. I have cramps and a sore throat … but my spirits are up nevertheless. It helped to find I could get the letters you sent to Brussels. You can’t know how much mail means … perhaps more than it means to you for you are at home … I’m not sure what that means except I’m more insecure than you … and mail only comes in certain places and I seem to live for them. At first this was not so. I think the anesthesia wore off this weekend … and only now am I realizing that I have really gone and how much I long for you … at first shock, and now truth. Even the lost luggage didn’t sink in. Nothing was as real as this … this need of you and of word of you. Lovely here and actually warmer today than any other … Goodnight, my darling, I love you … Button …
Sept. 12, Thursday night
11:00 P.M.
Darling! It is unbelievable. I am typing with this thing on my legs, sitting on edge of our bed. Very difficult, I assure you. And I have so much to say to you … I got all your letters today, forwarded special from Brussels and also two more that just arrived from U.S. from you. God! Letters are food! I have lots to say but will save most for tomorrow A.M. when I plan to be alone and have all the bed to write upon. Our room is as small as a minute and no room, even on floor to type. No table either. Today was spent in looking up pep [people] for Sandy in connecting with retarded child. Lots of rides on the “trams” where Sandy’s wallet was LIFTED. Another sad story for us. Gone her 35 dollars, gone her Traveller’s Checks (which she did not have listed elsewhere) and gone about 30 bucks of my money in guilders. Gone! But I can hardly care about money because today I had such mail, such warmth, such love! To hell with money … hooray for love. I bought Sandy five scotch and water to cheer her up … and also for my cold, bad throat etc. All your letters make me want terribly to call you and cry out my l
ove. And the few words that the kids dictated too … Oh. oh. oh. I flirt with the idea of coming home a little early … but don’t know … the Alps are next and I must concentrate on that. God knows our real route … Zurich next mail stop anyhow. I’ve told pep [people] the 16 of Sept. will be last date in Zurich … but we seem slow on our schedule, not leaving here until Sat. the 14th … and I’d think it might take two days, at least, to Zurich and be there for perhaps three at least. Next mail to Venice (in case we think to skip Austria and just make for Italy) … does this help. I wish I could think more clearly because you can’t know what mail means to me. It is food! The thrawl (sp.?) of new places is passing … only the new and terrible longing for you takes its place. I keep trying to remember this is my chance in a lifetime. But it doesn’t work. Perhaps I am only just now realizing how much I love you … it isn’t need … for after all I have Sandy (even if she can’t read road maps and loses everything all the time) … still, she is nice and is there and I don’t simply need you … it is not sick, this longing … it is just one thing and the name of it is love. I love you, Kayo, and know it is an entirely different way than ever before.… Is that why I came? To find out … perhaps … if so I’d like to bounce home into your arms … I don’t feel as if I’m in a different or exciting country … no, I feel that I’m only a little away and only a wall separates us and my need is to open the door and walk through. Perhaps for the first time in my life … I know it. I want to open the door and rush toward you for I love you and I love our life. If I needed foreign cities to tell me this, then I’m glad I came. Now I know. This time I know—the love isn’t sick … no, indeed, it is health, the giving force, the outward reach instead of the inward grab. I see much in perspective that I couldn’t before. Do you know I don’t miss Martin at all. Nope. Just you and Linda and Joy. YOU are my life (he is only my past). YOU YOU YOU. Here I am with a cold and cramps in a strange city, losing $ etc and all I can think of is your letters.
xo Button
[…]
[To the Sexton Family]
Zurich
Sept. 19th, 1963 Thursday
Dearest Homefolks,
[…] Oh! sob sob. Gee whiz (!) I’m sad. There is no one lonelier than a girl with dark hair and clod shoes on, standing in front of an Am Ex clerk as she shuffled through the “S” pile of mail and then says “none for you” … Oh what words of sadness! Oh dejected! As I walk out and sit in café next door while Sandy reads HERS. Oh. It’s not your fault, but just so you’ll know.
To tell you the truth I’m getting more homesick instead of less. Now I really shouldn’t be … but there it is, the bald and naked fact: I wish I were home. I’m sorry I keep writing such sad letters but there is no controlling or hiding it when it is there, and no amount of travelogue will hide it in the end. Perhaps I am growing over here but I can’t feel it. I hurt too much! […]
Sandy is being very funny to cheer me up, suggesting we go down town again to see the new Richard Burton Elizabeth Taylor classic. When we left Boston it was the aura of their romance that cast our parting Cleo-mood and now to Zurich there they are again. So I say yes. But am holding things up to write you … for if I don’t write I’ll cry and this is better choice for time being. Sandy says she refuses to be sympathetic to my sadness or then she’d just join in. But she says she was prepared for it (to be sad herself) and so she continues to be so positive, almost nauseatingly so … but then, she puts up with me and (as she calls them) my mungy kleenex. That’s a good name for all the kleenex … I use up. Sandy today has a cold which she protests is not mine, but her own.
I wish I could get more letters … (I know it is my own fault—some gypsy! All I do is cry!) To hell with the view! I take your pictures out and study them and study them … I reread your letters, Kayo, until they are in tatters … and then I come back and type my heart out to you. I think perhaps I need to be on the road where I get so tired I can’t feel sad. I don’t know. Last night at 2 A.M. I staggered downstairs in this ark of a place, dragging Sandy after me, to the phone booth in the main hall to call you. I was determined! No one was up. But no matter how I tried I couldn’t get anyone on the phone. Switzerland is the only country where you don’t put your finger in the Operator’s hole and get an operator (I know that is funny … it is my only humor of the day, as shady as it is …?) … But even with the aid of telephone book, all in German, couldn’t figure out how to get anyone on the phone. Today I don’t dare ask as I’m afraid I’ll call and you know how much that will cost and what good will it do really … only make us all sadder I guess …
Well, just so you’ll know where my late at night inspiration goes. Now listen, everyone, if I don’t get a letter from two people named Linda and Joy by the time I get to Venice I am going to be a very sad mother. I need letters from you girls and in your words. If you want to dictate it to daddy, okay, but whatever you do, you must write to your mother. If you don’t well then I’m not going to send another family letter at ALL … the rest will be just to daddy. I want you to be busy and to be having fun, but I want you also to remember me and more than that to write to me. For every letter you read you ought to be writing one! This is something you ought to learn and if you haven’t … I am the loser … and you two are the losers … for how else can you learn about love … it is giving and receiving, but it works like a swing, it must be pushed both ways. You are old enough to give the swing a little push. I sound cross because I love you so much and long for your words. You would feel the same way if I didn’t write to you. Just think how you’d feel! I know you wrote a little bit once on Daddy’s letter … but only once … a letter a week from both of you would be little to ask … if you go away sometime you will know how I feel and you will expect letters from both Daddy and me … and you will get them. But I am not getting them!… Okay! Get the idea! It is all love but I want a little push on the swing from both of you, SOON!… Today I bought Joy a Christmas present! It is very pretty and I have looked at it 16 times since returning from town. It makes me happy. Perhaps in some other country I will find something just right for Linda. I’m sure I will! Nothing yet for Daddy … Except the news, quite real I hope, of a week’s earlier return home. Today I wrote Martin I’d be home Dec. 11th. Of course it will depend on schedules and airplanes and all that—but we can head for it can’t we …? And without failing! Forgive the sadness … this is Anne, Button, Mommie, who is in Zurich on some crazy endurance test. Believe me, it would be far easier to get sick and come home. I am trying mightily not to take the easy way out … Please someone quick write me some encouragement! SOS … send encouragement to some address … My cold is better, weather mild though cloudy … can’t write poems, only letters … too sad to make a poem out of all of you … you are too real for such as poetry … too close and, dear God, too far, too far. Need I say I love you and am proud of you? Need I say anything more than this desperate sad letter that has no new scenery in it and no new sounds and nothing nothing but the plaintive cry of a homesick wife and mother?????
love,Anne Mom xo
xo
Annexo
[…]
[To the Sexton Family]
7:00 P.M.
Sept. 20th Friday, 1963
Zurich, Switzerland
Dear Homefolks,
[…] How can you be so far away? Tonight I have been with a family again. How can you know what it means to be with a family! Four weeks of rooms and of paid meals … and then into a home! To, for so long, be a sightseerer (I think I am starting to talk like, Otto … what you think Kayo!?), only a sightseer … is lonely, is to be an observer of life and not a participant. A strange alienated thing … watching but never being. At home, without new sights and of course missing me, at least you do take part, live in and belong in the home. Here, there is never a home, only a temporary dwelling place, a borrowed bed, a paid for meal …, no matter what the sights, they pall … so tonight to be with a home, a family, a table, the warmth and of friends … is
good, was good.
Yes, Otto and Trudel are very fine. She is really very pretty, a hearty glow and with much more warmth then I expected … for he is so extravagant that I thought she’d be shy. But she did not seem so. We talked and talked. Otto had gone out and bought gin and vermouth and had me mix a real martini for me and Sandy. Then we ate, a marvelous (the best I ever tasted) omelette and then Italian (home-made) pizza. […] When we sat down for dinner Sybil said grace and then the whole family held hands … just the way we do with “hands around the table” … it isn’t a German custom anymore than ours is an American custom … a family custom. Isn’t life strange and wonderful … to think that countries that tried to kill each other were sitting at separate parts of the world, praying to win and trying to love with the same hands around … makes you realize the war is made up by someone else … not by these people … you realize that America is your home, but so, again and most now, is the world. And if not then there will be no people holding hands and perhaps they are all that matters, no test ban agreements, or trade barriers, but the families … I see this, in the home of a “Nazi” … and I wonder … and I know.