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I had him for so much less time than I’ve lived without him, and yet his presence is enormous, though I keep it to myself. It is as if I’ve swallowed a hot air balloon but try not to let on.
There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, ‘oh, this is only a season.’ You know what I am referring to, don’t you? I mean how if someone is in difficulty they’ll say ‘it’s only a season.’ Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season—a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!)—and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are, by definition, four seasons that repeat in measured pattern year after year. As there
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But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years.
You asked about Lars. He’s getting quieter all the time, and when he does talk it’s almost always nonsense, and then sometimes he comes out with these magnificent statements and that’s like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day.
I think most people spend the workdays watching the clock and living for the weekends, but that wasn’t the case for me. There was a lengthy stretch of my life when I lived for the work. It was a haven for me, getting to the office and into the work, and so much of that was because of the partnership with Guy, so thank you for allowing us to have that, Liz. Now that that part of my life is over, I keep it in a box, forgetting that the contents of that box are vast, endless! It’s been nice taking the lid off and rummaging around a bit.
Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?
We still laugh about that. And you know, regarding Felix, he endured torment as you do, but he is the smartest, kindest man, and he is HAPPY, and his life has turned out to be magnificent, so you’ll push through. It’s all you can do.
I began writing letters and became obsessed. Most often, when I wrote, I got a letter back. This surprises people, but I have found that most people write back.
So that’s where this all began. You would think I’d have it down to memory by now, but for some reason the only part that stays word for word in memory is the bit about being born at dawn under a pink sunrise. Isn’t that lovely? Makes me miss a thing I never really had. Now I don’t think about it, at least not like I used to—although I do sometimes. Yes, I suppose it’s still rather always there, part of the original foundation. There, even if I’m not thinking about it consciously. There it is down at the bottom.
In your letter from March you mentioned the matter of your boredom. Of course you are bored. The mind was not created for idleness. Golf, drinking, staying in one’s pajamas until late in the morning, stretching oneself to find ways in which to pass the days is the way we were meant to spend our vacation weeks, not decades of our lives.
I wonder, are you a reader? I could never trust a person who wasn’t a reader, though my doctor says I am going to go blind here in the not too distant future, at which point I suppose I will become a nonreader.
She wanted to know with whom I exchange correspondence, and I told her: anyone! Of course the letters I cherish most would be of little or no interest to her, but I showed her a few of the more remarkable letters—the one from Jackie Kennedy, the one from Walt Disney. She was astounded that people write back, and of course I told her: people are just people. Famous or not. Silly, but then it was fun going back in. I sat for the rest of the afternoon once she’d gone thumbing through some of the correspondence I’ve saved. There are hundreds of letters, into the thousands I expect, and to think,
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When I imagine you it is still in the house we shared, though I know you have not lived there now for almost thirty years. Because I cannot envision any other place I think often of it, and our life there feels like only a short time ago. Sometimes, like a test, I wander that house in my mind and see if I can still open every door and see what was inside. I make sure I can account for the entire house, down to the details like what photos we had on the mantel. How the cupboards were organized—cereal beside the refrigerator. Mugs and bowls over the stove. I step the stones from the back door
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Getting to your questions about the letter writing. I’ll start by saying your note heartened me because here is a secret: my letters have been far more meaningful to me than anything I did with the law. The letters are the mainstay of my life, where I was only practicing law for thirty years or so. The clerkship was my job; the letters amount to who I am.
An e-mail can in no way replace a written letter. It does concern me that one day all the advancement of technology will do away with the post, but I hope to be dead and gone long before then.
Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning.
About five days ago I couldn’t sleep after I woke around four. Typically I’ll switch on the light by five to read, but I was lying in the bed and feeling agitated. It was like I’d woken to a sound but couldn’t reach back to it. I lay there listening to the wind for a while, and you know I just decided to go outside and be sure everything was OK. The moon was bright and it was that crisp February cold, so I put on a sweater and my coat, my boots, and I walked outside. How strange it was to stand in the front yard looking up into the tall trees, all their limbs moving shadows like sticks under
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when you named Lars and me as Fiona’s godparents, already knowing that I wouldn’t ever have what you had, it was the greatest gift. I understood you were offering me an important, lifelong position and, as you know, I have always taken being her godmother very seriously. My relationship with Fiona is dear to me, and probably because I am not her mother she has felt, she feels, a strong connection to me without any of the tricky dynamics that always (inevitably, it seems) plague the relationships of mothers and daughters, and in fact, I have always had the feeling, even from the time she was a
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As I think more about the matter of your little Miss Henrietta, I just can’t help but think that it would be a shame if you knew you had a blood relation and you never contacted her—what a waste. And it wasn’t her who gave you up, was it? She wasn’t even born. You’ve uncovered a treasure! You can’t just leave it flung out there.
So I spent the day thinking yesterday and one thing I decided was that I’m going to write to this woman in Scotland after all. You know I do believe in an intelligent God with plans and a firm grasp on what is happening down here—and if I’m meant to reach her, I will. At times it seems like insanity to trust in a thing like that. And yet I do. I must.
And now there is this Scottish woman with whom I am hoping to connect, one tiny little person out there in a sea of billions who is theoretically my family. How strange it all feels to me. I’m sitting at the desk this morning, it’s fourteen degrees outside and snowing here and there, I’m all tucked in here with my tea and thinking about how strange it is, and wondering—have I been lonely? I wouldn’t have ever said that, but now that I sit here thinking, I wonder, was I always lonely? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home in the world, but I’m not sure that’s unique. I’m not sure. I’m really not
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Watching their father be erased with the incoming tide made them cling faster to me in a way, and that sense, I suppose, of one’s lineage or history. In any case it took me some time to accept not only the gift but also the fact that there was something missing for them. I sent the saliva sample away at last. I was surprised by how anxious I became in waiting, an anxiety I couldn’t define, and then the results came by mail. The pie chart of my alleged ancestry woke up something in me I hadn’t even known was in slumber, a deep and hidden thing. I admit I wept over it.
I’d love to hear from you, if you are the letter-writing sort. Most are not, but every once in a while I strike oil.
As I told you, I have had a long-term houseguest since the fall and garden club happens to fall at a time in the evening when the fish are biting. My guest likes to fish in the evening before dinner and frankly I enjoy his company far more than I enjoy our meetings, which have become overrun with women more interested in chattering on about their bygone husbands, arthritic joints, and bowel movements, and munching on cakes and cookies than information about gardening.
Every year the anniversary of that day comes and I grieve. I cut flowers to put in a vase in memory of my brother and my father, but also I cut roses for the celebration of your birthday, which makes me glad. I feel fortunate we have become friends the last couple of years. I had reached a point of thinking my life had run out of surprises.
My apologies for the long wait. I won’t take so long the next time, and hope you won’t punish me by waiting your own six months to reply. I’m on the edge of my seat, as they say. You yourself, Sybil, open a door to a world of possibility.
(I guess she was wearing the heavy sweater because it was absolutely freezing in the building, something men do in summer, turning women to popsicles.)
One doesn’t know how to bring a letter of this sort to a close. There isn’t a template for such a thing. I’ve sat here for quite some time, and I don’t know what else to say other than you get to be seventy-four and you think it’ll be a nice easy coast to the end, and then you find out all along you had a sister living in Washington, DC. I guess I would like to know about you. What has come to pass in your life?
I’m heartbroken. Seventeen years—SMACK—just like that, shattered. Makes me realize how Stewart was braided into everything. My work, my routines, my friendships, meals, movie watching, book reading, walking, waking up, drinking coffee. Makes you wonder what any of it was for. What it meant.
I am going blind. I am not telling you this as a plea for sympathy. When I was told by my eye doctor seven or eight years ago it was as if suddenly I was waking up from a long dream, a dream that had been my entire life, and now here was the real life and a timer had been set. When my eyes go, that will be the end of me, I thought, and the notion of the end of my life, though it feels trite to say, made me reminisce and consider the past in ways I had not done. You should know that among other things, there you were. You, your mother, your brother, and your father, Enzo.
There had been no mercy shown to me; why should anyone receive mercy? My misery made me cruel.
We’re all full up, and yet the thing I always thought was so small now seems as enormous as a galaxy, this thing I have felt my whole life, and that is, a sense of something missing, this curiosity of why my mother let me go. I haven’t the tools for it though. How to open myself up, let the flood wash over and through.
It felt very good talking to them about the things I know. I remember when you said in an email that when you find a place for yourself in the world, it feels like music, and I thought of that, sitting over the table with Dale Woodson and talking about highway infrastructure. I guess I am a very boring sort of person, but to me highway infrastructure is a symphony.
I began writing letters because my birth mother (as a child I thought of her as my ‘real’ mother) had, apparently, written letters. I clung to this and did actually find, through correspondence, inexplicable relief. I could write to anyone. I could take the time to think through what I wanted to say, practice, rewrite, and get it exactly how I wanted it. It was so much easier for me to write than it was to have a conversation, even. I was insecure, painfully so. I felt so strange. On the phone the other night you mentioned this, that you wondered if maybe I could only have meaningful
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When I was young, by writing letters I found a framework that made living easier, and that has never changed. However, I do wonder if by conducting the most intimate relationships of my life in correspondence, I have kept, since I was a child, a distance between myself and others. I think it’s true the letters have insulated me, have been a force field, just as practicing law insulated me from dealing with humanity directly, and I wouldn’t change any of it, but I find myself, at this old age, wanting closeness. I want closeness. Something I have not had other than when I met Dad.
Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like—What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside me. It’s gotten a bit softer over time, but it’s never gone. I walk around the house or dig in the garden or wander the grocery store or sit at my desk and there’s a screaming inside my head like an air horn that warns of war.
I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.
I thought when I started to lose my sight in this way, when it actually began to slip away, I would cling to it with all my might, but that isn’t the way I feel now. Now that it’s become such a strain, I almost find myself ready to let it go. Not totally, and you know I might go back on that tomorrow, but today that is how I feel.
Reading this over, it seems a bit sad that’s all there is to it! A quiet life. There’s more, of course, but I’m not exactly sure how, and the vision makes writing such a chore (and writing was always a chore for me). Would it not be much easier if we talked on the phone? Would you mind? I also had a thought, and perhaps you would think it mad as well, but I had the thought you could visit. Perhaps together the boys and I could impart some of the past to you.
And I was angry, of course, but it was really that I was dismayed by your mercilessness, the way you dished out blow after blow, refusing to yield, even a little, and provide the reading population with a sense of relief in any measure. It was agonizing because it felt so true to the experiences of my own life, and I suppose, back then, I was reading fiction in search of assurances that there was still reason for hope.
I take great care with my selections now, knowing my years of reading are coming to an end.
Here was something I had not taken pains to see, but for which I was now looking, indeed hoping to find (as I am hoping to find in my own life): this GREAT VITALITY. Augustus and Call, full to overflowing with the meaning of the life they had made.
But you should know that this text, this work of storytelling, touched something in me, lit a wick. I suppose I’m moved. That’s what I am trying to say. You moved me.
My bookstore is really more of a book town.
My first time out of the country, and at seventy-nine years old!
How to put words to my pleasure? What little my eyes have seen? I am home. The landscape soars, immense and distant and gentle, and the sky is crisp and alive, clear, moving, and textured, the air a raw quality I never knew existed. All the green, the stone, the water. My sister is wonderful, clever, and quiet. You know who she most reminds me of? Harry. Hattie and my three half brothers, well, it seems as if I’ve had all four of them all along.
I never told Daan. I tried many times, I wanted to, but now he’s dead. I’m sure it’s why our marriage ended. I have wondered if Rosalie knows. Maybe not the details, but my part in it. I’ve always felt she knows. That was the end of many, many things, one of which was any desire I had to go anywhere. No more travel. Look at what Sybil on travel had turned out—a dead child. My second son, gone like that. You can imagine the aftermath: grief and guilt on repeat for forty years. I guess in one way I am a writer. I am a correspondent. It’s been terribly difficult writing this, yes, because of my
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There is a quote from one of my friend Joan Didion’s essays. It’s from the last essay in The White Album. The quote is: “What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read.
I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.
You know, I imagine what it would be like if you were here. I’ve taken your personality, all that I knew of it before you were gone, and stretched it out as far as I am able. It’s like trying to press out pastry dough as thin as possible without tearing it. I stretch you out to now, imagining you as a fifty-four-year-old man. However, what I have very rarely allowed myself to do is remember you. When I start to think back, I often slam the door—well. But this morning I was sitting in my sister’s garden listening to the birds and the breeze and the cattle nearby, my eyes closed, and a memory
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