After the Stroke (14 page)

Dorothy Healy took us around, her eyes sparkling with pride. She has been the moving spirit of the college for many years—and it is she who has created the Maine Women Writers Collection. She showed us around, then Brad Daziel came and helped Nancy take the big box of autographed poetry books I am lending for the library opening—books which will go to the library after my death with my whole poetry library.

Thursday, September 25

At last the sun! Calm glittering ocean—and my spirits rise. But I want to write to Juliette and send her an article in
Newsweek
on Memory which I found fascinating, including a single line which made me smile, “Snails hate turbulence”—the sort of phrase one can play around with for hours.

Here is another from Juliette's last letter: “But the truth is a very dangerous rock on which to put your writing desk.”

Saturday, September 27

On Thursday afternoon I saw Dr. Petrovich and, thank goodness, my heart is not fibrillating as I feared it might be. The Westbrook day was exhausting and that explains why I felt so queer and dizzy on Wednesday.

Perhaps partly the relief of the good news did it, but I woke up yesterday with, at long last, the poem about the four ducks and two geese I pass every day on my way to town, beginning to form itself in my head, and in about two hours I got it down, and revised it yesterday, so it is
nearly
there on the page—a poem I have been contemplating for months. I jotted down what “came” in bed yesterday morning, and that makes me wonder whether I should not let that happen more often, lie there and see what comes to mind—before I get into the clutter and pressure of household, animals and finally my horrendous desk.

It's a real autumn day here, windy and cold, with a rough ocean that glitters like molten silver. When I came back from the doctor's on Thursday it was serene, so calm and beautiful, I went out and did an hour's cutting down of perennials in the garden. Perfect bliss. It is hard to describe how happy I am in the garden—the smell, the occasional monarch butterfly floating over the last phlox—Pierrot rushing in and out of where I am working like a frenzied
Comedia del Arte
actor—and Tamas coming to lie in his place under the maple tree. When I lift my head perhaps a sail appears on the ocean. Unfortunately, as I was trundling a wheelbarrow—full, to take to the compost—I saw Tamas and Pierrot standing together—at play? No. I was amazed to see that Tamas had a baby rabbit hanging from his mouth in just the same way—the animal, limp—Pierrot carries his prey. I managed to unlock Tamas' jaws and rescue the poor mauled baby rabbit—but it was going to die clearly, so I laid it on a shelf in the garage, the eye still so bright it
hurt.
Yesterday it was dead and I buried it under pine needles.

Tamas must have taken it from Pierrot, I think. One cannot be sentimental about the world of nature, but nevertheless, it is impossible to face such murder without acute misery.

Sunday, September 28

One of those days when nothing gets done and time runs away under my feet—I'm not running but time is! It is very cold with streaks of sun through high clouds. At this very minute I must write a letter to Annie Caldwell in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Hers is dated July ninth—hard to believe. The problem these days is not letters from strangers—there are four or five a day I often do not answer now—but letters from old friends whom I neglected while I was ill. These fine threads, the tapestry of friendship that goes on being woven every day, must be kept alive.

Tuesday, September 30

I wake up happy, longing to get at the day—and then energy gets frittered away taking rubbish down cellar, keeping things more or less in order here. That is a daily struggle.

Meanwhile every time I go out I am in a dream of wild asters these warm autumn days. They are a cloud of lavenders and whites and purples all along Godfrey's Cove Road—such a journey into delight.

Wednesday, October 1

Warm sticky weather—over eighty-six degrees here yesterday. I ordered my tickets months ago but when I went to pick them up, found the agent had booked me to Indianapolis October first instead of the tenth! She could not get me on a plane for the tenth so I have to go a day early. But it may be a good retreat to have a silent day to myself as I have been invited to stay at the Carmelite monastery. I always feel at home among nuns, and I look forward very much to this, and am touched by the kind invitation.

Bulbs have come but I shall wait I think till late October to put them in, so at least the chipmunks won't get at them before the ground freezes.

Friday, October 3

I came back from my first professional sortie this morning. A Book and Author Lunch at Dartmouth College. It was foggy but by the time I was out in the country the fog was only making Chinese paintings with its swirls on distant hills, and I came home drunk all over again with the beauty of this New England. Everything I see now is seen freshly because I have been away so little for nearly a year. But the soft yellows, oranges and sudden scarlet of swamp maples—the secret ponds and lakes hidden away in the hills, and the old gentle hills themselves—it made me homesick for New Hampshire.

It is a relief to have this first hurdle of public appearances behind me, although at first I felt like another attack by the gremlins that seem to be attending me lately, for I thought the dinner preceding the festivities was Thursday, and it turned out to have been Wednesday! Nardi Campion called on Wednesday evening as I was getting my supper—very relieved to find I was all right. Kind of her not to be cross, but I began to think I must be crazy—so it was a bad night, especially as Pierrot was nowhere to be found till after nine and I was stupidly anxious. He is so white he is really too obvious as prey—and the night before at four in the morning I had heard the awful shriek of a rabbit, no doubt being lifted away in the talons of the barred owl. Noel Perrin, at the dinner he gave last night, reassured me. He thinks an owl would not win against a large fierce cat.

What a joy it was to see Noel again! He has white hair now and writes often for the
Times
and elsewhere and won the National Book Award in the last few years. I find him an utterly charming man, shy and eloquent, beautiful in a subtle way. Humor flickers in his eyes. I have always, since we met at Breadloaf years and years ago, known that we were kindred. “We meet about every twelve years,” he said. It is so fine to be at once so at ease as though we were old friends. He is twice-divorced and when I suggested as he walked me back to the hotel that there was much to be said for solitude, he said that his ideal marriage would be alternating weeks of solitude and family life—but it would be hard to make the transition back and forth.

He gave the dinner for me, Nardi Campion and her husband, and a silent young woman professor at Dartmouth who is a fan. I liked her straight look but she said nothing. Anyway it was an extravagant gesture for Noel. You have to be a millionaire to take five friends to a restaurant these days—and it was a truly festive meal at a French place called Une Fraise just down the street from the Hanover Inn. The desserts were especially marvelous, mine
crème anglaise
with some fragrant syrup of fruit poured over it, no doubt enhanced by a liqueur.

It was far better for me to be invited to dinner after the exhausting day than it would have been the night before—although I missed seeing Dick Eberhart and Betty and for that I'm sorry.

The day began at five when I stumbled out of bed in the dark in order to leave here and drive for two and a half hours to Hanover by half past nine. I made it in time to take part in a radio interview with Jane Brody—the health expert at the
New York Times.
Louise Erdrich got there as we were running out of time. I found myself on top of things and happy to be “at it” again. Brody is a truly committed person and that is always endearing. But Erdrich was the most delightful surprise, so quiet and witty, so generous—she talked about what the Hopkins Center had meant to her when she was a student at Dartmouth. She has five children and has already won every prize with
Love Medicine
—she is half Chippewa—and that was a stunning book but not quite a novel, rather a series of short stories strung together. What does that matter? Only I suppose that the organization of a novel is much more complex and harder to design. I liked L. E. tremendously and felt a thrill to be on the stage, for once, with two women I admire.

But I'm glad the Concord reading tomorrow is reading poems where I am able to create my own atmosphere and Zeitgeist. They have had to move from the chapel at Concord Academy to a large auditorium, “requests from all over the East Coast,” the librarian told me.

Saturday, October 4

A gray day here with just a streak of bright silver at the horizon where the sun has broken through. The air is gentle. The world feels very still and autumnal here. The animals are asleep somewhere in the house. I feel happy to have this day for myself.

Sunday, October 5

But it didn't turn into a May day after all—a phone call at eight broke the morning meditation when I plan the day and as I water the plants, make my bed, etc., approach what I hope to do slowly. A phone call at that time shatters the creative person in me like a glass. Then the mail brought a request for a recommendation to the National Endowment. I believe Karen Elias is going to do something of great philosophical importance as she continues to probe the female psyche. I am happy to recommend her
but
it had to be done at once. I read it with the mail at noon when I was feeling very tired—and laid it aside till after a short nap. I felt once more that I can't handle my life. It is too much for me to be the crossroads—or whatever I am—for so many many people, never to be quite free to have my own life, to be always suspended on someone else's need. I managed to write something for the Endowment. But I felt upset, at cross-purposes.

Meanwhile I am reading Peter Hyun's fascinating autobiography,
Man Sei
.! He has managed to compress an enormous amount of information into the tale of his childhood in Korea under the Japanese—and at the same time give a vivid picture of his droll, brave, sensuous nature—so we are entranced by being allowed in to this remarkable family, and into a part of history we don't know. But this necessity to read fast and write to Peter has also made me feel like a donkey being beaten, “Faster, faster!”

Peter was at the Civic Repertory when I was a student and director of students there in the thirties—and I saw him last summer briefly with his delightful wife and his daughter. He is such a beautiful old man.

Now in a few minutes I must set out for Concord to give my first poetry reading. Thank goodness the sun is out and I'll have a wonderful drive through the transparent golds and crimsons.

Monday, October 6

What a joy to be with Phyllis and Timmy Warren—Tim is Judy's nephew and they are really “family” for me now—in their old Victorian house in Concord, Massachusetts, only two things missing, Keith Warren, “Gramp,” who is now in a nursing home, and the yellow cat who used to sit between Keith and me on the sofa. Keith, well over ninety, still writes wonderful short essays on whatever is on his mind although he is legally blind now. I slept in his room and felt warmed by all the family photographs on the wall, grandchildren now joining his beloved wife Barbara, Judy's sister, and their three children. Tim, white-haired and distinguished, has taken on one advisory job after another, an exemplary citizen of Concord, so I teased them about being “the Royals” of the town.

I had a short nap after lunch, got dressed, and off we went to the Concord Academy, a beautiful modern auditorium which looked almost full at two forty-five. I was touched and delighted to see Keats Whiting in the second row. She was ninety the other day and never goes out, but was driven over with others from Carleton Village by Anne Tremearne.

All of this felt cheerful and welcoming—Susan Sherman in the front row with a bunch of vivid red and white anemones for me—but I have to admit that I am very shaky still. It was not nerves but physical weakness I had to combat when I started off.

I think it was a good reading—though I entirely forgot to read the first poem, “Franz, A Goose”—and only remembered it in the middle of the night. I made a break halfway through and sat down for a minute, and that was a real help. It is so odd to feel and be so frail!

After the reading we all went over to the library for champagne and delicious pastries and
hors-d'oeuvres.
I never got a chance to eat because people were lined up in what seemed hundreds to get me to sign books. So many connected to me in some way—including a woman who had done the costumes for a production of
Trelawny of the ‘Wells'
I directed years and years ago at the school—in 1940.

Jamey Hawkins and her friend sat beside me while I signed, the dear things, all the way from Boston and Jamey not well. It was a kind of Sarton “Old Home Day” and I loved it, though after nearly an hour I felt rather bushed.

The good news is that I know now that I can manage a performance—so I'll leave for Indianapolis with more confidence.

I brought home with me a round basket of flowers and herbs like an eighteenth century bouquet, and the card read:

Roses for Love

Rosemary for Remembrance

Mint for Eternal Refreshment

Oregano for Substance

Verbena for Delicacy of Feeling

Santolina to ward off Evil

Zinnias for Thoughts of Absent Friends

Tuesday, October 7

Yesterday there was a momentous event for me and that was to read Darlene Davis's M. A. thesis for Pennsylvania State at Harrisburg, “Johannes Vermeer and May Sarton: a Shared Aesthetic.” I read it with amazement to find someone who has understood so well what I am after and has managed to relate it to the incomparable Vermeer in convincing ways. She used Vermeer's painting “A Woman Holding a Balance” as her chief anchor in the analysis and
A Reckoning
, my novel, as counterpart.