Status Updates From Ako som sa stala pani Lewis...

…leaning against the ancient wall…absorbing the sight of the River Cherwell. We stood, our shoulders…a breath apart, as a line about rivers from Shakespeare’s King John came to me. “Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, For villainy is not without such rheum.” With a sudden laugh Jack lifted his face to the sun and finished. “And he, long traded in it, makes it seem like rivers of remorse and innocency.”

Even being turned down for a professorship at Oxford cannot dim my cheerful mood. And last week I gave a speech about children’s literature at the Library Association—I believe I shall take the speech and turn it into an essay; it contains much of what you and I wrote about in our letter—the good and bad ways to write for children. As has become the way: your words help to clarify my own.

I wrote about the Ten Commandments, yet wrestled with their meaning in my own life. Yes, I was committed to staying married. I wanted to make it work with Bill, and yet my mind was consumed with what to say or write to another man and what he might say to me in return. This wasn’t infidelity, but what was it?