Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986

  It was a strange afternoon—to be talking and listening to someone on the verge of death but so passionately alive in spirit and mind, so hypersensitive and so stimulated, as if she were eager to talk, eager to explain, eager to share. A strange kind of “high” in the face of death. She must have been exhausted afterwards, I realized, but I could not deny her my attention, or deny her the outpouring of impressions. She did not want to let me go, and said it did her “a world of good.” I thought of the letter we received about Mme Carrel’s death and her last week, which had been evidently unusually alive and vigorous, described in this letter as “le bien de la mort”*—a sudden flowering of life that you sometimes see in an old apple tree with a fountain of young shoots exploding from its trunk.

  I was rather shaken myself, driving home, realizing I would probably never see her again. Realizing that an almost fifty-nine-year friendship and conversation was ended, I realized too that I was losing a mother figure—not a physical mother but an artistic one.

  Sunday, July 31st, 1983 [DIARY]

  I have been in the chalet a month now, with Barbara, who has just left. It has been a very pleasant month. Barbara and I live very harmoniously side by side. We are alike in some ways: oversensitive and overconscientious. She is a lot more practical than I am, and I am at this point in my life a little more relaxed. She is working her way through the pain, shock, and rejection of a divorce* and the facing and finding of a new independent life. I feel she has made great strides since Christmas and is over much of the (quite natural) bitterness and beginning to enjoy her new strength. We have talked a great deal, perhaps too much, but it has interested me.

  Facing divorce and facing widowhood have certain superficial similarities but basically they are totally different. Widowhood sustains more of a wound but it is easier to live with the pain, which is two parts love. In divorce there is almost no love, which is torture, hell. On the other hand, if one can get through the bitterness of divorce—throw it away, put it behind one—there is another world to walk into. There is the adventure of finding a new self, a new interest, and a new life. For the widow this is more difficult, especially the older widow. One does not want to throw away the past. There is much one wants to hang on to, to carry on, to finish. There is so much baggage to go on carrying on this journey, while the divorced can throw away a lot of accumulations, happily and triumphantly. And then, with a widow, there is the sense of there being less strength, less time, and less energy to start a new life.

  How is one to live? This is what I meant to do in a book but cannot achieve—or get to. Is it distractions? Or the general lowering of my life-force in aging? Or the lessening of pride and ambition? The lessening of vanity? A kind of humility? Why write another preachy book? Why not give directly to people? This is perhaps just laziness—or weariness—or fear of failure. I must face this, this summer, and give up gracefully if it is really my age and my failing energy and slowing of mind as well as of body, so I forget words and have to search and scratch for the right word.

  I do not have the psychological energy to focus for hours on pulling my files and files of notes on old age and widowhood into some acceptable form. There is so much of value there that I hate to lose it. It should be given, but in what form? Perhaps it is impossible to make a book of it, even a book of scraps and pieces. To make it into a book I would have to give up much that I have found of “a new life” after widowhood.

  Chalet

  August 10th, 1983 [DIARY]

  It has been a week since I received the first full and long letter from Reeve on Jonathan’s condition. After three terrible weeks at home—when he cried day and night but the quality of the crying differed, first screaming and writhing, then just a colicky baby’s crying, then continual fussing, as “natural as breathing”—the family pediatrician advised his going back to the hospital. It gave Reeve and Richard some quiet time to sleep, and it gave the baby five days of hospital care and feeding. He had been losing weight and “not thriving,” due partly to his mother’s breast-feeding having diminished.

  He returned after five days, much quieter and eating and sleeping better. However, they made more tests and said that they now think he had encephalitis; the last “CAT scan” showed some signs of brain damage. They said there was no way of predicting what that will mean in terms of his development.…

  Reeve has been obviously in agony, envisioning anything from “minimal impairment” to a “total disaster.” Their own family pediatrician does not think this last image is realistic and does not expect such a serious outcome. But Reeve, of course, is shattered by the month of no sleep and constant anxiety, and now the total uncertainty. And she is constantly on the watch for the worst symptoms.

  She does report that Jonathan now seems “cheerful for the most part, happy to be home.” He responds to his family: his father and mother and the girls. Richard feels he is alert and trying to communicate, responsive at an increasing rate. Richard seems to everyone strong and supportive, but Reeve is obviously on the edge of panic, in spite of her courageous, honest letter. I could hardly bear to read it.

  After reading it several times I decided to call Ansy, not Reeve, to find out how things were. Ansy and family are now in Darien and I was able to get her. She gave me quite a good picture and said Connie F. had taken Reeve to Dr. Rosen in Pennsylvania, to help her panic and also to find out more about brain damage. I also found out that Heidi was there and Mr. and Mrs. Brown were living next door to stand by if Richard or Reeve needed to leave. All this is helpful and may ease the situation but not appease the anxiety.

  It has been hard for me to do anything since but think about Reeve. I know what she is going through and identify with her so much. Perhaps Rosen can reassure her, let her express her fears, let her cry, all of which is hard to do as a mother in the midst of a family.

  I telephoned her the day after she got back from Rosen. Her voice was so lifeless I hardly recognized it and, better than anything else, it told me what she had been going through. It was, of course, heartbreaking and I longed to say something hopeful to dispel that graven discouragement, but I realized that she has to stay on the lowest level to remain steady. They have to take the gloomiest estimate, out of fear that hope will let them down again. She cannot stand any more seesawing from hope to despair. “We live from day to day.”

  Hope is cheap for the outsider who does not suffer the consequences of being let down. I am not exactly an outsider. In fact, I am possibly overreacting because this situation is a horrible repetition of my own tragedy so long ago. What I did not realize was that my tragedy is haunting her. Perhaps Rosen can help here. Perhaps she has always identified too much with me?

  I decided not to call her again until things were on a steadier level. I went out that night and looked at the stars and tried to pray. In my heart I begged Charles to help her through this—I, who have no strong belief in immortality! Still, prayer helps—and perhaps the focus prayer brings.

  I do have a strong feeling that her worst fears are unjustified, brought on by her exhaustion and encouraged by the careless and unjustified predictions and prognoses of a lot of experts who, I suspect, only want to ensure that they are not blamed in the future for a false diagnosis. Also, there is no doubt that she identifies with the old tragedy that happened to me and her father. How terribly the ghosts of an earlier history haunt the present! Must the scars of one generation go on and on?

  Darien

  Friday, December 2nd [1983]

  Another month gone by. All the time since my return has flown—with nothing written. It has been a difficult fall, chiefly because of my worry about Reeve, who is still depressed and “living from day to day.”

  I made a trip down to Gardenville to see Dr. Rosen and find out what he thinks about her. Both he and Hazel were warm and welcoming. He has mellowed a good deal and retired from much of his practice. He has white hair and a limp from his old accident, but he can still play eighteen holes of golf and is a
s perceptive and strong in his mind and life-force as ever. He is very hopeful about the baby’s recovery.

  After the visit to Rosen—a hearty and optimistic atmosphere—I went up to visit Reeve in Vermont, where I stayed for almost a week, seeing the picture through her eyes and living in a rather pessimistic atmosphere. This baby is perfectly beautiful: a big healthy child of nine months with the motor ability of a four-month-old baby. He cannot turn over or sit up by himself. He does not try to crawl. His motor ability is being worked on by physiotherapy three times a week, as well as every day at home. In a week I saw some improvement.

  He is not a sick or passive baby. He responds to one’s talking, cuddling, smiling, or playing—done chiefly by the college girl whom Reeve has had for a month, who is remarkably sweet and gay and open with him. His two sisters are also marvelous with him. They adore him and rush to pick him up, play with him and talk to him. And he responds, trying to make sounds like theirs. They are the most spontaneous members of the household and are, I think, the most healthy influence on Jonathan.

  Reeve and Richard are tender and careful with the baby, but it is all tinged with sadness or stiffened with apprehension. Reeve told me she felt she had “lost” her baby and had a “changeling” in its place. She looks for, and finds, of course, the worst signs.

  Richard is just rather stiff and dutiful with the baby, so different from the way he treated him before the illness, with joy and gaiety. The St. Johnsbury pediatrician, who has had him from the beginning and knows the two girls also, said to Reeve, “I do not know how it will end but I do not see total disaster.” But she cannot believe him, or does not dare to.

  I don’t feel the baby is a “changeling.” He seems to me the same baby but caught in a net, struggling to get free, struggling to talk, to sit up straighter, to respond to his sisters, to hold a spoon. Certainly he is behind, but not “astray”—just trying to catch up. However, except for the girls, it is a very gloomy atmosphere. I rack my brains to think of ways out for the parents: a visit to Darien, a trip to Florida, Christmas in Darien (it would be too gloomy in Vermont). Everything is compared to last winter’s hope and joy. I understand the sadness and the long gray vista they envision ahead. But I cannot really believe in that scenario.

  After the week in Vermont, the family (without the baby, left in Vermont with Beth) did come down to Darien for a weekend and it was quite a happy time. Jon and Karen* turned up for one night with them. It was a full house and I packed a bag and moved down into CAL’s office and slept in the single bed I had in Next Day Hill before I married. I can remember sleeping in that bed when C. and I were engaged and he was a guest for the weekend. One morning when he left early, he came into my bedroom to kiss me—still asleep in bed—before leaving silently for town. (Long Island? Some trip?) How good and chaste we were!

  Fort Myers Beach, Florida

  February 15th–28th, 1984 [DIARY]

  My last day in a two-week visit to Fort Myers Beach to be with Reeve, Richard, the two girls and Jonathan. I meant to work every day and have not even written in my diary. Why not? The whole fall and winter have gone like this—into what? An obsession, natural enough, in a mother and a grandmother, over Jonathan and Reeve’s exhaustion and despair. I arrived exhausted from too much desk work, as usual.

  This winter I have not really been ill (one week of a bad cold) but I have felt so much older and get tired so quickly. The day in town exhausts me. My arthritic hip wakes me every night, though the pain is controllable with aspirin and exercise by day. Mrs. Swanson comes regularly and faithfully, but she also cannot really help me enough. Shopping for groceries exhausts me. My life is not well organized. I must somehow make some changes. Get new people? More help? Or move to Washington to a better climate and a more comfortable condominium? It has been a long, cold, and disagreeable winter and I have minded it more than usual: the weight of worry over Reeve and the baby and her despair also affects me. I can do so little to help.

  Here in Florida I have at least been able to see and feel what she is carrying. I understand her problems living in suspense. She has bloomed in the sunshine and with the ease of living and the support given her by wonderful Mrs. Ruggles, a staunch tough Vermonter helper, and the moral and affectionate support given her by Jim and Ellie.

  I have also rested. I had a return of the Meunière’s dizziness when I arrived, so that I had to go to bed and rest a great deal, but Jim’s medication and much sleep and some walking on the beach have restored me somewhat. I find Florida—at least this kind of boardwalk beach living—rather boring. I am in a separate cottage two doors down from Reeve and Richard. We meet for walks and supper, and Jim and Ellie enliven our talks and our evenings. They have poured strength and confidence into Reeve and she looks much better and seems more hopeful about Jonathan’s progress, which continues, but very slowly.

  He is such a beautiful child. One’s heart aches for the struggles he makes to gain control over his body—still recovering from his disease—and his struggle to communicate with people. He is a very alert and responsive baby and longs to break through his restrictions. I think of Cyril Connolly’s saying, “In every fat man, there is a thin man wildly gesticulating to be let out.” There is a strong, well, vigorous and rebellious child inside of Jonathan’s stricken body, struggling to get out. I feel he must succeed! He has made progress: he is freer with his arms and can direct his hands better—in the last day or so knocking over a small box (of sunburn cream!) we put within his reach, looking triumphant afterwards, and smiling at our shouts of praise.

  Aside from the times with the children or the evenings with the Newtons, there have been walks down the beach. The middle of the day is too hot and too bright and full of people: either pacing up and down two by two, like passengers on an ocean liner; or joggers tearing by, relentlessly athletic; or groups of picnickers spread out on the sand; or bicyclers pumping their way, sometimes in tandem; or children digging up and building sand castles; or women sunning on bright towels or in lounge chairs. I feel the lack of privacy. The beach becomes a boardwalk and everyone has a group, or a husband. I feel very husbandless here.

  But evening and morning it is bare and beautiful. Only the squadrons of gulls sitting alert but motionless, all facing the wind, and tiny sandpipers sweeping the rim of the waves, with their tiny runs. The sunsets are beautiful, and the sea and skies expand, and the people disappear for their drinks and supper.

  Little House

  March 30th, 1984

  Dearest Scott:

  When I write that address on the envelope I feel: this is hopeless. This can’t be right. This letter will be dropped into the Amazon delta and never get to him.

  I have a letter from Alika, from which I gather that it was very discouraging for you when you got back to Brazil and found things in a mess, or not well cared for. Only one man, who could hardly be called a caretaker. But I also gather that the work goes on and that you are still planning on coming to the U.S. at some point for “new equipment.”

  I have been having some of my diaries and notes copied and came across the wonderful letter you sent me after your father’s death, about the most frustrating thing in life being the unfinishedness of things. (You said it better.) This must be truer in Brazil than anywhere else. It set me thinking about my life since then; I did not always follow your wise advice: I tried to “finish up” many things about and around your father’s life. But I have endured, and become myself again, or perhaps just a different self, who finds life “tenable” and even happy much of the time. Too long to go into fully here.

  I have talked to Reeve this morning. She is helping Jim with the book he is putting together of his taped memories of CAL, Edison, Ford, Firestone, and Carrel.

  The baby is improving: he is more active and more responsive to sounds—his name being called and his parents’ voices and the children. He enjoys playing games (“Peek-a-Boo”) and laughs with them. He holds his head up better and reaches for things better. H
e cannot yet turn over but he tries to move around more. I am hoping Reeve and the baby will come to Switzerland this summer so that Mme Christen (a wonderful physiotherapist) can work on Jonathan.

  Much love to you, Scott, and I hope we see you before long. We all miss you—especially,

  Your Mother

  Little House, Darien

  April 2nd, 1985 [DIARY]

  I am determined to spend some part of the day in the Little House: meditating, sitting on the bench outside, or inside writing something in my diary—perhaps just the day’s events. It is beginning to be spring, but gusty, cloudy, and cold. The miniature reticulata iris have been a staunch little row—bright blue flames on the south side of the house, where it is sheltered, for almost a month, breaking through the dead leaves before anything else. The miniature yellow iris next. And now the daffodils begin, one or two here and there. The forsythia is not yet out, but almost. There are a few robins, and on a sunny morning I hear the cardinals, “Cheer, cheer, cheer,” high and triumphant. We have had some warm days when one hears a great chattering down in the cove, the geese and ducks proclaiming spring.

  It has been a long winter, beginning with Jonathan’s death on January 8th, found dead in his crib that morning, with no cry, no illness, and no warning. I have not recovered from that tragic blow, coming after months of hope and progress in his motor ability sparked by my bringing Mme Christen over from Switzerland to treat him with her creative and intuitive therapy. He improved greatly after each session, one here last spring, one in Switzerland last summer, and the third just after Christmas, again here. For Reeve, it was a second death, the first being when he was so ill with encephalitis and [she was] told that there was evidence of brain damage and he would always have difficulties—a retarded or handicapped child. “Why did it have to happen twice?” she cried.