Martha leaves for her vacation tomorrow. Anne comes back in a week, which will be lovely. Please come back and sit on my terrace and drink Dubonnet with me!
Love—love—(What a wonderful birthday letter you wrote me!)
Anne
Wednesday, December 10th, 1958
Dearest Con,
Right in the midst of la vie triviale of Aspen packing and Christmas shopping, we are suddenly immersed in la vie tragique. Jon called us at two a.m. last night to tell us that Jim Robbins was two days overdue on a flight out of Denver for Seattle. The weather was “good,” his plane all right, and he had no “flight-plans” (no schedule of his route). He must be down somewhere in the Rockies or the Cascades—crashed, killed, or—a dim hope—making his way out of the wilderness, out of touch now for three days. CAL was on the phone half the night and this morning again getting in touch with Army Air bases, search and rescue operations, etc. But you can’t search the whole Northwest for a small plane.
The only hope lies in the fact that Jim was an exceptionally skillful pilot, experienced in that terrain, tough in health and ability to survive in wilderness conditions. (He was an Alaskan bush pilot.) He has gone down before, in Alaska, and last year in the Northwest, and walked out (on skis last year). He has skis and ski clothes and emergency food in the plane. So we are all hoping against hope he is down in some very out of touch area and making his way out.*
In the meantime, we are back in this desert of suspense, that is always the same—a territory one knows so well and feels instinctively in the chest, in the dry throat. And the old impossibility of reconciling the frozen standstill suspense of waiting with the dogged day-by-day pressure of doing—of going ahead in life.
It is impossible to look ahead. I did Christmas lists this morning, doggedly, while Reeve sat red-eyed in bed, making presents. How to explain to children these sudden meaningless tragedies? His three children are carrying out all the details of the search with magnificent courage, calmness, and his kind of dogged determination.
As I witness this, I find some kind of compensation or reconciliation linked to a phrase sent me in a letter: He left no crippled orphans behind him. They are all brought to shiny independent maturity. It is hardest, perhaps, on Dick, who has no wife, but has carried on Jim’s brilliance in engineering and is now launched in this.
I must put this in the mail and go back to Reeve who has had a bout of the flu. The day is bitter cold and beautiful. Our first snow fell yesterday. Again, so hard to reconcile the cruelty and beauty of nature. Will write again—
Love—
A.
Scott’s Cove
January 22nd, 1959
Dearest C.,
Your letter from Zurich has just come—on the areas in Switzerland. It interests me very much, especially the new areas you have discovered in French Switzerland in the pre-Alp country (north of Lake Leman in the Canton of Vaud). The variations sound interesting, and of course the greater availability plus the French language are an advantage.
You do not say anything about coming home! No hope of it? We are, I think, doing all right despite quite extensive weather. First very cold, the cove frozen out to the island—like the ice-pack—for about two weeks. Then, a thaw and fog and rain—just over. Tonight it is due to get very cold again.
The New York, New Hampshire, and Hartford had its bad wreck (which you predicted), which put it out of any regular service for a while. Fortunately, the overturned cars were freight cars and no one was hurt.
I went to bed after you left, trying to get over the Aspen cold or bug or whatever it was—chiefly exhaustion, I guess. It took about two weeks. (I was only in bed one whole day but for a week felt absolutely flat and kept going back to bed.) But I am all right now.
I have seen Kurt and Helen who are planning a big change in their lives and work: to move to Europe (Zurich) more or less permanently. This is to lessen the pressure on him, really. He will head the European side of the business, and instead of moving back and forth between the two offices will just stay there. He seemed quite pleased when I told him we hoped to be in Switzerland this summer. And I must say, it would be nice for me to be able to see them there, if we make any kind of return trips winter or summer.
I must let this go and get to my Little House. I have been writing this over two days. The sun is bright this morning and it is very cold again. I have already lit my Little House and it is warming up.
I have called B. and Jon on Krissie’s* birthday and they seem to be all right. We also called your uncle last Sunday night. It has been very cold in Florida, but he seems to be in good health and spirits. I am ready for the Virgins!
Much love and come home soon
Anne
Scott’s Cove
Monday, February 1959
Dearest Barbara and Jon,
Your letter made me very happy—the feeling that we can communicate what one is thinking—feeling. I don’t think it strange (I wanted to write this right back to you) that you felt far away from Jon during this period of shock at your father’s loss. I can remember when my sister died, CAL wanting and trying to comfort me—and I felt I had turned to stone. I only felt in one direction, and I was close only to all the people who were going through the same thing, feeling my sister’s loss very immediately. And the same thing was true at my mother’s death. Only that was so prolonged it wasn’t as acute. And I suppose, poor man, he felt the same way with me, when his mother died.
Tuesday morning
Your father, Jon, is still away. That makes the whole of January and most of December, too. “How does father stand being away all the time?” Anne asked me. “And how do you stand it?”
I don’t know, sometimes I feel very abandoned and put upon. Then I think, this is the way it’s going to be from now on—more and more as the children leave. (Reeve is never at home any more—always out with a friend watching TV and Scott is off, too.) It is just like being a widow and I should make up my mind to accept it and decide what to do to counteract it, as a widow would: live where I want and can get companionship, be near the people I love, etc. California? Halfway between Con and Jon and B.? San Francisco? Well, you never can tell, I might turn up out there! (Buying a TV might be one solution—not for me—but for keeping the children at home.)
Now, I must go to my Little House. It is a lovely bright cold day. I shall skate again this evening. That helps.
Friday, March 6th, 1959
Dearest Land,
Scott has just gone out, all dressed up in his tweed jacket, in the new blue Volkswagen. I assume to a dance! Or to take a girl out. Your father gave him a little extra money, I guess to make up for breaking one of his best calypso records last night (on purpose!).
I know it is hard to write letters—the real things don’t get said and the other things don’t seem worth saying. I also find it hard to write letters. After I’ve been at a desk all morning, I can hardly bear to go back to it in the evening, no matter how much I want to reach the person I’m writing to.
I hope you are seeing people. I think it is quite a lonely period when one has broken off a close relationship. One misses it even though one knows it wasn’t quite right. This is painful and sometimes confusing too. I guess there’s no way around it but time, and facing the disappointment in oneself quite honestly as one has to accept any kind of pain—not trying to escape or drown it in ways that don’t help (but only force it underground—to come out explosively in other ways).
Also, I have the feeling you may be feeling about college the way I feel about my ghastly novel, which I keep plugging away at but which I have outgrown and now doubt the value of—but somehow want to finish—because I feel nothing is learned from one’s unfinished books. The whole problem of going through the ritual, the discipline, when the vision has departed (going through the ritual when the God has left the altar; St.-Ex. describes it). One did have a vision once and it might be still there. Only one is blinded to it, temporarily. You mus
t have outgrown parts of college, other parts not. I hope you can be seeing interesting people—both students, graduate students, and professors. This kind of stimulus one can never outgrow or have too much of.
I must stop—getting too sleepy. Don’t you think you ought to come down to the Virgin Islands with us to look at sugar plantations or listen to African or Caribbean rhythms?
Love,
Mother
[From a letter to Alan Valentine]
Sunday, April 12th, 1959
Not yet back a week, I still feel deliciously loosed from my moorings, and in spite of three days of rain, snow, income tax, and a bad leak in one of the bathrooms which has come down into the dining room, I still feel rather light and airy. (Fluid, like one of those beautiful fish on the reefs, gliding with no haste and perfect ease, in and out of turreted coral castles.)
Even the book looks different now, and I have gone at it again with fresh eyes these first three days. How long this will last I don’t know. There are, of course, real duties to be taken up and things to be decided before summer (family problems and decisions that cannot be ducked or postponed), but spring should be here soon and that should help one live from day to day, instead of guiltily in the past or apprehensively in the future, which I find weights me down and makes me live unfreely, unspontaneously, and uncreatively, as I do when I get into a rut like this winter.
How wooden I feel tonight, and letters are! How awkward and inadequate. So much to say. So little gets through. We must talk. I must go to bed and add a line in the morning.…
I know the discouragement of not having the response to what one has written. (With me it is because I am so infernally slow at finishing anything. So much that is written is wasted, must be discarded or cut and changed completely.) You write faster and perhaps must expect waste in other ways. There is so much waste in creativity, always. But there is something curious about creativity: the trying-too-hard for results seems to defeat itself. (The something-to-show pressure, I call it in myself.) I know this kind of pressure, for me, reduces what I write to a thin, weak trickle. It is only when I am “loosed from the moorings” of wanting a result that I write the most freely, and well.
Also books do ripen on shelves, I think. After an absence, or in a new environment, suddenly the knot, or the stale part, or the unclear section, clarifies and can be shaken into focus quickly. Remember that big creative act of taking hold of your life freshly and adventurously, as you have just done, takes much of the creative energy you have. It cannot help but use it up. One tends not to count that in the ledger.
Now I must go to the Little House to attack the end of the book for the hundredth time.…
Come home soon!
My love …
February 4th, 1960
Dearest Land,
I suppose you have heard from your father who has bought the new VW for you to take possession of, temporarily, in March? He seems also to have entered Scott in a school and is trying to get us a chalet for the summer above Vevey. Some practical steps.
In the meantime we have been carrying on here, skiing weekends. Scott has suddenly become phenomenally good at skiing, wedeling downhill with both skis together, waving his ski-poles carelessly. He looks like a long lean future champion. He is now so excited about skiing that he won’t stop for lunch. However he makes up for it afterwards having a large tea at 4:30: three hamburgers, two glasses of milk, chocolate cake, pie, hot cocoa—and a cookie! I ski conservatively and stop often, surprised to still be on my feet.
I have also just seen Wild Strawberries in Stamford. I must say I think it is his* masterpiece. I realize it may not be as deep as The Seventh Seal or as provocative as The Magician but I think it is more perfect than either. Marvelously simple in structure, terrific in impact, and astonishing in its economy—every detail counts, nothing is wasted, like a pared-down intensely moving piece of sculpture. I am fascinated by it technically—as a stream-of-consciousness novel—in film. As such, it is meant “not to be read but to be reread.” Bergman’s films should be reseen. I couldn’t get to sleep after it—he stirred up my unconscious so completely. I wish I could talk to you about it. He certainly is obsessed by Time, Death, God, and Love. But then, so am I—who isn’t?
I have just sent you an odd book by a psychiatrist* who went through a concentration camp during the war and came out with a “meaning” to life and a new core of beliefs for his patients. I could not put the book down: a simple object but moving as a poem—as a human document—and despite the horror, somehow very positive. The last part is an outline of his “new” school of psycho-therapy in Vienna. It is really based on Nietzsche’s statement: “He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how.” He feels man’s life must have meaning or he goes to pieces—and that man’s “will to meaning” is stronger than his “will to pleasure” (Freud) or his “will to power” (Adler).
I realize you are now on the last lap; papers and examinations must loom. No time for extra reading. Perhaps you can read it on the flight to Europe. It is a little book and easy reading. Have also been reading The Biology of the Spirit, by Sinnott†—a paperback—Compass Books—worth reading on the same general field from the biological approach. “The suggestion is offered that this tendency toward goal seeking, manifest in the activities of both body and mind, is a basic characteristic of all life, and that life is thus inherently goal-directed and purposeful.”
Well, dear Land, you’ve gone into this more deeply and intellectually than I and I could take lessons from you. I would certainly like to have a chance to talk over these subjects and get your thoughts on them, and other things. It must be good to be almost through! I think of you often and so much love,
Mother
Harkness Pavilion*
March 18th, 1960
Dearest C.,
Where are you? I have been expecting you every day for the past two weeks. I know I made light of the operation but I did hope you’d get here in time to take me home. Of course, I can arrange to get Mrs. C. to do it—or a limousine, but I wanted it to be you. It would help so.
I am still in the hospital. The knee operation turned out to be much more extensive and complicated than I—or they—anticipated. The knee had deteriorated so much since the last X-rays last June. The doctor talked to me about it the night before: he said he didn’t know that I would ever have a skier’s knee again. Also the consequent pain, swelling, and retardation of healing were all geared to the more complicated operation. I also (you know me!) was so anxious to start exercising that I developed a huge blood blister on my heel which had to be lanced. More delay! Ten days after the knee operation, I had the lump taken off—a very small non-malignant growth. I’m glad it’s over. But this soreness in my right hand has delayed my use of crutches, necessary to learn before I get out of the hospital. The doctors say my knee is improving very fast now—my muscles are good. The doctor even says, “I think you’ll ski again too but don’t ask me when!” Please come home as soon as you can. This is a time when I need you.
All well—love,
Anne
Norwalk
June 7th, 1960
Dearest Jon and Barbara,
I am sitting in the lobby of the Norwalk Hospital where I go for therapy three times a week for my knee—which is much better.
Saturday morning, June 11th, before breakfast
That start was interrupted by Scott and Reeve coming for me, Scott to take a chest X-ray, and both to have shots for Europe. This last month has been terribly full packing up things for storage, moving out of the apartment, etc. It is one of those times full of packing-boxes, extra furniture, CAL running up and downstairs from the attic, everyone clearing out. Last weekend was a holocaust (if that is the word) with Land going over everything he had ever had, throwing away and wrapping up. (Susie* is going to be surprised when she unwraps some of those brown paper parcels: old Navajo dolls, bits of petrified wood, Mexican hats, African slave bracelets, etc. So useful a
round the home!) His cleaning up was catching: Reeve went through all her cupboards and closets, including the one Land called “The Doll Morgue,” and Tommy,† intoning a funeral march, helped carry cartons of dolls down to a funeral pyre. Anne turned up with her latest beau and a Volkswagen crammed to the gills with her things from college, also dumped into our house. Uncle has also been here, polishing cars and digging up the garden.
I felt dreadfully gloomy seeing Land pack up his treasures of twenty-three years and feeling the family was breaking up—though, of course, it could be said it was doing the opposite—getting closer and closer! But Land did seem very serene and sure of himself and we are all very happy about Susie.
I certainly shouldn’t feel sad about Land’s leaving the family when I realize what Jon’s marriage brought us: Barbara, the children, and greater closeness for all of us! I feel now I couldn’t love any daughter-in-law as much as Barbara, but I’m sure I’ll love Susie, too. (Anyone that means as much to Land, Barbara, and Krissie must be something very special!)
I am firmly hoping to get to San Diego for the wedding (though I wish it were two weeks later. CAL says it’s the worst week of the year to get transportation back from Europe—the end of August). I can’t very well come earlier, as I must get Anne some “safe” place in Paris for the winter—at least reasonably respectable! And also must get Reeve a school and us an apartment or small house for next winter. I can’t put this off any later—should have done it this winter—but couldn’t because of the knee.