The House by the Sea (16 page)

Monday, October 27th

T
HE MARVELOUS WEATHER
goes on, and still no hard frost. I came back from a reading at Dartmouth, two nights away, yesterday afternoon and was able to pick some last bunches of flowers for the house … such joys! Now it is a windless day, a glittering ocean, so brilliant one cannot see the blue for the dazzle.

At Dartmouth, though all went well and I find Noel Perrin just as oddly charming as I did when we met at Yaddo I felt all my old horror at the academic atmosphere, the tremendous hazards involved, because an effective professor must be a performer, I suppose. A college
is
a closed world, a breeding ground for prima donnas. Noel is not like any of that, thank goodness. And the next day he, Ed Kenney, and I had a solemn walk up a steep field to converse with some cows and then along an old millrace, rich tumbling waters because of the deluge the day before.

On the drive home I had a brief glimpse of the Warners (heartwarming like a tonic) and then stopped at Lotte Jacobi's for lunch. The best thing of the weekend was a bowl of salad—the small dark-green lettuce leaves, strewn about with brilliant orange nasturtiums and two marigolds … it tasted as delicious as it looked. Lotte is just back from a show of her photographs in Philadelphia and must have been tired, but as always we had a long good talk. She always manages to set everything in proportion for me again.

I'm dreadfully anxious about the book and must get to work now. The reward will be planting lily bulbs this afternoon.

Thursday, October 30th

A
N END
to the radiant days … they have been wonderful. I forget how beautiful it all becomes when the leaves are gone. I have a far wider expanse of ocean, and from my bed can even see waves breaking on the distant rocks. The sun is slowly moving southward and will soon rise in the exact center of my three bedroom windows. The maple has shed its almost last leaf, so the ground for yards around it is blood-red. Down in the vegetable-annual garden I am engaged in a herculean task, trying to get out all the crabgrass and witchgrass so I can pile hay on to be a permanent mulch. It is fun, really, to drag out those long roots and clear out space.

Heard two thunderous shots early this morning—someone getting a pheasant or a duck. I never hear it without feeling depressed, all joy gone for a while. And tomorrow the deer season begins. Luckily it gets dark before five! Then for a night there will be no terror in the woods.

I'm dead tired, so tired last night that I didn't cook, just opened a can of soup. Maybe it is partly relief, for I have decided, at Carol Heilbrun's suggestion, to omit the piece on Rosalind and I think this lightens the whole book.

Thursday, November 13th

Y
ESTERDAY
I picked a few marigolds, a tiny blue primrose, and some bachelor's buttons—the very last of the garden. I don't remember an autumn when hard frost held off so long, but now we are in for it. In a way I am glad, as I was afraid the tulips would think it was spring.

I have been in limbo because of a scare about possible cancer. I was in the hospital for three days for a biopsy, and yesterday, home again, heard that all is well. The small lump proved to be only basal cell carcinoma, a kind that does not spread. These three days in the hospital I was in such mental anguish over a misunderstanding with Anne Woodson that I went through the whole thing floated somewhere above it, hardly caring what they did to me. I had insisted on a spinal anesthetic so that my head would stay clear, and it worked. I have had none of the queer sensations I had after the anesthetic when my tonsils were removed. Now I can finish the book. There is only the preface.

I have thought a lot about differences of temperament. I react too fast often, and blow off steam. My tempo is very fast about everything. I start the day very early and at full speed and collapse by eight
P.M.
Anne reacts with a slow burn, buries anger. Her silence can be as punishing as my anger. Our misunderstanding grew acute because I needled, and the more I did, the more silent she became. There is no black and white in such situations. Everyone gets hurt. Anne starts the day slowly and goes to bed late, and so on. It is as though we were on different tracks. But this whole thing has been brewing for ages and in the end facing it will make our relationship better than it has been for a long time. There is no growth without pain, I guess.

In the hospital I thought of other things too, of course. I realized that I am not afraid of dying, but what made me feel awful was what a mess it will be when I do, and what a lot of work involved for those who will have to take care of things here. I felt, “I simply cannot die and leave all this to be taken care of!”

It was wonderful to come back here day before yesterday to the shining dark blue sea, to the wide arc of the ocean, now that the leaves have gone.

Friday, November 21st

I
FINISHED
the preface yesterday and sent it off. Early in the week, after revising it several times, I suddenly had a moment of hope and trust in this book. Perhaps it is good enough, after all. I have been in such an anxiety about it for weeks that I am low in my mind and feel rather frail and exhausted.

When the news of the seven-year persecution of Martin Luther King by the FBI came out yesterday and the day before, I felt rather
sick
. We live in such a dirty world, and as individuals seem more and more helpless to change it. When I am tired, it all becomes overwhelming like a dismal fog that never lifts. Of course, Franco's death the other day had reminded me of the idealism, the lifting up of so much courage thirty-six years ago in the rallying of youth from all over the world to help the Republic—long, long ago. Then there was still hope and now there is not. Then, before the Nazi camps, we could still believe in the goodness of man. Now man looks more and more like the murderer of all life, animals too—he is the killer of whales and of his own species—the death bringer. Under everything I do there is this sense that there is no foundation anymore. In what do we believe? can we believe? On what to stand firm? There has to be something greater than each individual—greater, yet something that gives him the sense that his life is vital to the whole, that what he does affects the whole, has meaning.

Wednesday, December 10th

T
OO MUCH
happening! I have been out to Minnesota and back, had Judy here for a few days before Thanksgiving, and now am deep into Christmas … I've baked cookies every afternoon for a week.

Before I forget, this from Janwillem van de Wetering's
A Glimpse of Nothingness
(Houghton Mifflin, 1975):

You meet someone.

The other.

You meet the other.

You are polite. The other is polite.

You eat each other a little.

After his departure you are slightly damaged.

And what do you do then?

Do you repair the damage and do you become again what you were?

Or do you go on as you are?

Damaged, but lighter.

There have been quite a few encounters here lately—people I had put off because of the book. They have been interesting, but I feel the effort more and more, feel empty when such a guest has left. I am hungry now for a period of retreat, for myself, for poetry. I look forward to the drive to North Parsonsfield to see the farm Anne and Barbara will move into in two years—to be passive and see trees and poor little houses. I have long felt that one of the great appeals of New England, what tugs the heart, is the dignity of poverty in the rural areas.

I felt it very much when I looked at a house deep in the interior in Wells … a house that might be the one Lee is looking for. For the first time I knew a pang of acute nostalgia for “the sweet especial rural scene,” for Nelson. The land around this Merrifield place is among the most beautiful pieces I have ever seen, rolling open fields with here and there a grove of great trees, white pines, and around the house huge old maples, an ash, and a lovely elm. It is spacious and varied, and all of a sudden over a small rise one comes upon a small deep pond, steep banks, a secret place, surrounded by pine—a trout pond, the agent said. The house is not so beautiful as mine in Nelson, but it is in apple-pie order—one could move right in! But Lee is going through such pain and anxiety (the grafted bone in her shin is not healing properly; the retraining of the knee muscles is agony) that I doubt if she can get into the frame of mind of hope and conviction necessary to make such a big decision. I got agitated and upset by taking even as much responsibility as trying to persuade her.

We had a southwest storm last night, warm, floods of rain, high wind … the seas are turbulent this morning, and soon I shall walk down with Tamas and take a deep draught of that crashing of waves on rocks. Mrs. Horton (I met her the other day at the first meeting of the board of Elderhostel at Durham) lives in Randolph and she—such a delightful woman!—said that she loves the mountains more than the sea, because the sea is “always in motion” and the mountains are still. I do not think of the sea as motion so much as a great openness.

Monday, December 22nd

W
E ARE
in the middle of the worst storm I have seen in my three years here … the seas a rocking dark gray undulation that shatters in breaking waves, high wind, and about seventeen inches of snow. It let up a little yesterday for a while; now it is sleeting. Shoveling, which was easy yesterday with twelve inches of light snow, has now become hard work, as it is wet and heavy with a frozen inch on top. Poor Tamas! His legs are too short and even though I make a path out to the garage, he does not use it for the intended purpose! Perhaps today we shall be ploughed out and I can get the mail and also take him for a walk. I had to put off fetching Judy till tomorrow.

Last night I decked the tree alone, a big fire in the fireplace, and it was lovely and quiet, doing it slowly … it's the first time in thirty years, I suppose, that I have done it without Judy … this time she will find it lit and shining when we get in tomorrow afternoon.

Very lucky that I set out on my Santa Claus expedition last Thursday to deliver cookies and presents in Peterborough and Nelson, to Brattleboro to see Marynia, and finally Wellesley.

Marynia, sitting in a wheelchair in the sun porch at the Eaton Park home, looked me straight in the eyes for the half hour I was there, and recognized me at once when I arrived. But she is not really there anymore, stroked my sleeve compulsively the whole time, as though I were a cat or dog. In the wheelchair beside her a very old lady wept. It was excruciating to witness this unassuageable grief, and I finally fled. How much stamina and grace of heart it takes for the nurses who see all this every day, knowing that none of these patients can get well, only worse day by day, for their illness is old age!

So it was a particular blessing to be with Eleanor Blair, where I spent the night in her cozy nest in Wellesley, the house full of plants and flowers and books, and her interests as wide as ever, and the same with Marguerite and Keats. I have to remember that senility is not always a threat to the old. Old age can be magnificent.

Sunday, December 28th

I
T HAS NOT BEEN
the best of Christmases … I missed the real moment … that one always waits for. But this year it never really came … I think because it is very hard now being with Judy alone, Judy who is not there and has become terribly restless. The small frustrations are hard to bear in the middle of trying to lift the whole huge package that is Christmas. For instance, we always have breakfast in my big bed, and that is a lovely way of starting our day, looking out on the ocean and waves breaking in the distance to the left, and when there is sun, the sunlight touching the small brilliant objects on the bureau, with Tamas sitting beside us hoping for a small piece of toast, and Bramble purring on the end of the bed. That is lovely, but getting to it is often quite a struggle … one day Judy took off her nightgown five times and each time I explained, “Don't get dressed; we are having breakfast in bed!” I run up and down the stairs five or six times to be sure she is ready, and there she is with her nightgown off again, thrown into the wastebasket once! But finally we make it, and then there is good hot coffee and peace for a half hour or so.

I would like to remember the good moments … the first that comes to mind was dawn yesterday. I had promised Mary-Leigh to go out before seven and decide whether we should call the snowplough or not. It was still dark, a waning moon, very bright in the south and a single brilliant star beside it shone on the frozen crust of the snow. The sea was quiet after the storm and in the perfect silence my boots made loud crackles on the icy ruts; Tamas ran joyfully ahead, surprised into barks by this unexpected dawn walk. That was a perfect moment, the fresh new day.

Another was Christmas Eve, getting everything ready for Anne and Barbara, who came to join us for dinner after an exhausting day at the airport in Boston getting the children off. It was good to watch them relax by the fire, and for the only time this Christmas I read “The Tree” and “Nativity.” It is really an exquisite tree this year, reflected in the big windows at both ends of the library, so there are three trees alight at the same time. “This is my real family,” looking at B. and A., I thought. All through this Christmas I have been haunted by Ruth Pitter's poem “The Lost Tribe”: The last stanza is

I know not why I am alone,

Nor where my wandering tribe is gone,

But be they few, or be they far,

Would I were where my people are!

Wednesday, December 31st

T
HE YEAR
is ending in peace … soft air … an angelic pale blue sea, breathing a long breath as the waves hush-hush against the rocks. And I feel greatly blessed. It still seems a miracle that I ever landed here. What if Bev and Mary-Leigh had not turned up that day in Nelson when I was so low and suggested that I think about a big move?