by May Sarton
From my window I look beyond the parking lot to a beautiful line of trees against open sky. Two are just swelling into leaf, horizontal branches in wide curves. They are my food, my peace, these days. How could we live without trees?
* A novel by Elinor Wylie.
York Hospital, Monday, May 12
How I have enjoyed complete passivity! Being “looked after” like a Paddington bear—listening to the bustle in the corridor as though from very far away so even the noisy voices didn’t trouble my floating. But I still feel frightfully tired and so I dread going home.
Meanwhile everyone is ill. Janice had a wisdom tooth extracted and has had awful pain as it got infected. Lee Blair has a small operation on her knee today in New York (just overnight). What next? How fragile we all are—even Janice and Lee who are twenty years younger than I.
And I felt so safe and well. Now I’ve been knocked down—and that is what is difficult—to be suddenly old—to foresee cancelling all public appearances. A radical change of life.
York Hospital, Tuesday, May 13
Edythe brought me the first copy of Juliette’s autobiography Leaves of the Tulip Tree with the mail. Such a wonderful thing to happen while I’m still here, undistracted (at home a big order of plants has arrived from Wayside Gardens!), in a safe cocoon of quiet and time. I meant to read slowly but was borne on its tide irresistibly.
It is a very brave, deep and honest autobiography—generous to Julian in more than full measure, but what emerges of course is the rare kind of perception, never sentimental, clear-eyed and highly original in its way of seeing, of the extraordinary woman who wrote it. It is time Juliette was recognized as remarkable in her own right.
A lovely bright day here today and I suddenly long to be home and I soon shall be.
Sunday, May 18
The days are crowded—too much piles in that I must try to answer, but yesterday I did the first real gardening since the stroke—and put in orange impatiens in the shady curve of the stone wall by the Phoenix, some blue phlox, so blue I had taken it for divaricata, in the terrace border, a geum on the yellow side where the wonderful tree peony is very sad. Winterkill everywhere. And now prolonged drought does not help. But everything I want to do takes energy I do not have, so looking at the garden and its needs is a land of torture.
Still I did sit out on a chair on the terrace after my hour of planting and felt the peace—the birds’ evening songs and their swift horizontal flights over my head to the feeder.
I called Vincent Hepp in Houston to thank him for a life-giving letter I got day before yesterday. He has lifted me like a brother over hard places before. He had a much more severe stroke than mine three years ago and this is what he said:
This brings back strange memories to me. A strange trip that I took three years ago, where your fond thoughts and letters accompanied me, a trip from which I returned.
Simple things become impossible. Getting hopelessly tangled putting on my shirt. Desperately seeking the paste for my toothbrush. Turning the wrong button on the cooking range. Burning an empty pan, as my hot water remained inexplicably cold.
People talking about me as they would a child. My power gone, vanished.
Yet this is a trip to the border of wonder world—where words lose their currency, and symbols speak by themselves, as Music would. Time vanishes. I wake up during the dead of night. I sleep at high noon. The most tasteless foods now acquire loveliness: an oatmeal becomes a poem of fragrances. An egg delivers exquisite life to my sick brain.
My most urgent task to do nothing, and find utter satisfaction in it, as my cats, who stretch themselves, lick their dresses, and dream in self-contentedness. And I lie, in the company of the few beautiful things that I really need. A Shakespeare sonnet. An ode by John Keats.
Because I am better off in some ways, I am beaten down by minute “things that have to be done.” It is now nine. Pierrot came at a little after five and threw himself down beside me to be cuddled, purred loudly, patted my face, licked it, and we had about twenty minutes of this loving time, a charming way to begin the day. Then I got up, took his very dirty pan down and emptied it, cleaned and refilled it, drank my Metamucil and orange juice, let Tamas out, made my breakfast (oatmeal today with brown sugar and cream), had it in bed with Tamas beside me. He sleeps downstairs these days and I want him not to feel shut out. The difficulty has been Pierrot who hides under the bed and lashes out at poor Tamas when he lies down for breakfast-sharing. So I close the doors: perfect peace. Tamas loves oatmeal!
Then I got up, made the bed, washed the dishes, fetched the bird feeder I keep in the garage at night because raccoons steal it, and hung it up again. Watered the azaleas—everything is terribly dry.
And finally came up here a little overtired already. What oceans of energy I need to have! It astonishes me now even to imagine what I used to be able to do.
Monday, May 19
Just like Vincent I left water on the stove for my tea and, when the phone rang, answered and forgot all about it—a favorite saucepan ruined! Everyone says I sound wonderfully myself—but I can’t explain that I am not myself and the slightest effort is very costly—I feel excruciatingly tired all the time. So had to give up putting plants in yesterday.
Janice came and attached the long hose for the terrace so I could water the pansies and Nancy, the angel, who is putting in the border of lobelias, can water too, without dragging heavy watering cans from the garage.
I hear the ocean—tide rising—in long comforting roars down there.
Vincent had the extraordinary experience when he had his stroke of writing reams about his childhood. Where did he find the energy? It is mysterious—he might get up at two and write for hours. I have in these four months lived very intensely in the past—Juliette and her presence in my life again in such a caring way has been partly responsible. But I do not want to relive the past—can’t bring myself to read my letters to her and to Julian which are now in this house.
I want to live in the instant, the very center of the moment—Nancy’s voice talking to Pierrot while she plants the plants, and the distant mellow roar of ocean shutting everything less eternal out.
Yesterday Miggy Bouton called about Mother’s letters—and talked a little about Mother—how she was able to talk to children so well, on their level, yet never “talking down.” So few people alive remember my mother. It was a precious talk with Miggy and brought back good memories of 5 Avon Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Boutons lived across the street and were my “best friends,” especially Miggy.
[What a queer state I am in as I see I have not even mentioned the arrival near my birthday of Letters to May,* my mother’s letters to me which Connie Hunting has published. I made the selection last summer and wrote a preface, and Connie has done a ravishing edition, the cover one of Mother’s designs for a book of poems in 1910, the emerald green she loved on a cream background. So all these last weeks I have been happily packing and sending off copies to friends—the best event here in months.]
* Puckerbrush Press, Orono, Maine.
Wednesday, May 21
At last it may be going to rain. A dry wind from the sea was too much and I made myself water the roses and the terrace border where the lobelia Nancy planted was drying out. How I long for energy! Anyway, I made chicken soup for Pat yesterday—it took an hour. The leeks smelled so strong I buried half the bunch in the compost heap! But the soup tasted good, thank heaven! I dragged in a lot of food, fruit for Pat’s room, vegetables.
It’s annoying that I have to see Dr. Petrovich on Friday at eleven so can’t take Pat out to lunch as I had hoped to do and start her visit with what will be our routine.
Friday, May 23
Pat is here, arrived around six yesterday with Edythe who had kindly met her at Logan, as I really could not have stood up for such a long wait. Pat, glowing under her cap of curly red hair, a vivid presence. I felt carried on her energy and sensitive response to everything, in
cluding the stuffed animals. “It’s a child’s house,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
What a pleasure, since I again have anorexia from Amiodoroni, to see her eat every bit of the chicken soup I had made, an English muffin and half of mine, and eat her half canteloupe filled with strawberries to the skin! She is going to help me get well. That is clear already.
[As so many of my friends have done, Pat Keen came into my life because she discovered my books at a time when she was fighting severe depression, and began to write me remarkable letters. In these last years my correspondence with Pat is one of the very few I have taken on, because too much comes into the house and short letters are all I can manage. But here was an English actress who lived in Ipswich, Suffolk, where my Grandmother Elwes lived, an actress who had read everything, played several instruments, and was altogether a person of great reality to me.
In November 1984 I went to Belgium for my father’s centennial celebration at the University of Ghent, and decided to spend a week or so in London and see Juliette Huxley and meet Pat Keen. Meanwhile Edythe Haddaway had had major surgery and it occurred to me that we must celebrate her recovery by spending that London week together. So for once she was not house-sitting for me, but met me in London after the Sarton centennial. I had several engagements, including a poetry reading at The Poetry Society, and a talk about my work to a class at Jesus College, Cambridge. And unfortunately I had a frightful cold the whole time. Pat Keen saved the day, appeared with a taxi whenever we needed one, got theater tickets for us, and was in general a bulwark against any attack by weather, illness or whatever came about—so dear and helpful a friend that I named her our shepherd.
So, even though I was in no state to receive a guest, I wanted Pat to come here on her way to the opening in Los Angeles of Nicholas Nickleby. I wanted her to see this place and to have her first view of the States not Los Angeles but a corner of New England.]
Today I see Dr. Petrovich. Let us hope he has a date in mind for the electric shock—it could be such a relief.
Another gray day with showers promised!—we need rain desperately, and today at least the ocean is visible, very gray at the end of the now very green field.
I have parboiled potatoes and onions for the roast lamb we shall have tonight, an easy dinner, and I have a good bottle of Côtes du Rhône to uncork.
Tamas yesterday got into a fit of barking while I waited—from four to six—expecting Pat and Edythe to arrive. I was chasing grackles from the feeders, waved them off for two hours and still they came back—and Tamas barked! An enervating two hours.
The daffodils are nearly over—and suddenly after the spring orgy the florist has very little. How I miss the tulips! Mice devoured at least a hundred here in the garden.
A wonderful letter from K. Martin. She had been to a service in the Unitarian church in Santa Barbara entirely devoted to quoting Sarton. At the end she said, “I will always love you—especially when you said to me, ‘You have been to hell and back and you have not realized that this creates a responsibility’.” I have no memory of it but I do think it is true. Bless K. for remembering.
Monday, May 26, Memorial Day
In spite of constant cold gray rainy weather since Pat Keen arrived last Thursday, it is wonderful to have her here—and to realize that I can talk happily for hours because I have been starved for this sort of conversation! It is lovely to have this sensitive human energy around.
Tuesday, May 27
On Sunday it cleared halfway and we were able to make our planned journey to see Anne and Barbara in North Parsonsfield. Janice drove us and she is a wonderfully good driver. Not only is a visit to Anne and Barbara always a deep and fulfilling joy and I wanted Pat to meet them above all, but I also wanted her to see that, as one leaves the coast, Maine is full of rural poverty and dying small towns once supported by a shoe or textile mill—and how much uncultivated land there is everywhere, or woods—owned by whom, one wonders?
We brought lobsters—Pat’s first and she did a remarkable job of eating every possible scrap.
Only a few birds at the feeders at lunchtime—I had hoped for the evening grosbeak and maybe one of the eight bluebirds nesting in the bird boxes in the field. But we did see a ruby-throated hummingbird—also Pat’s first.
And of course there was wonderful conversation as always, ranging from the peace and the life there to Pat’s forthcoming tour of the U.S. with Nicholas Nickleby.
Edythe had come to look after the animals and the good day ended with a homey pizza with her. I had had a half-hour rest at Anne and Barbara’s before lunch so felt triumphant to have achieved such a long good day and not feel exhausted.
But yesterday was bad. I felt really ill in the afternoon after lunch at the York Harbor Inn, looking out over a sparkling ocean with almost no one there so we could talk in peace. But all afternoon I felt very queer again and could not eat a mouthful of the swordfish we had for supper. Pat, thank goodness, enjoys anything I have to offer. A wonderful guest who feels like family. I realize how lonely I have been.
Friday, May 30
Pat has gone off for two nights to Edythe Haddaway who will take her to Newburyport and Salem. So I have forty-eight hours in which to get household things sorted out—and myself centered. It has been a wonderful and nourishing visit but rather an effort.
Yesterday I went into a tailspin. Luckily Pat was not here to hear me sobbing and howling with rage and despair. On Friday they did a rhythm exam and it showed a very accelerated heartbeat, so Dr. Petrovich has put me on double Lanoxin and the experimental drug Amiodoroni for three days. Yesterday was the second day and when I lay down after lunch I began to have excruciating pain (worse than menstrual pain) in my lower abdomen. By three I was exhausted, so I went down to call one of Dr. Petrovich’s nurses, a kind woman called Lucy, to say they must give me a painkiller if this torture has to be prescribed again. Meanwhile when I sat on the porch to make the call (I did not have the number by my bed), I found two swarms of flying ants crawling all over the door and the window behind me inside the house. One kind is an inch long!
Lucy calmed me down somewhat, and then I went out, having remembered that Karen was sowing seeds in the annual garden, and screamed for help. Karen reminds me of Le Grand Meaulnes—she is so thin and tall. She came running and together we swept the ants into paper bags. I finally used Raid to kill off those that were left. This is the second time this spring I have suffered this horrifying invasion.
It is unbelievably wonderful that Karen was willing to come back from Tucson and work for me this summer. No longer do I see a thousand things that need doing and know I cannot do them—and she is so happy to be here! When I suggest that she had better stop at the end of the day she says, “Oh I’m so happy, I can’t bear to leave!” I feel wonderful support from her and from Nancy who helped me change the sheets on my bed this morning. Dear helpers, dear friends.
Life in the country is always a battle against nature, so to speak. For example, this has been the worst year for winterkill since I came here nearly fifteen years ago. The tree peonies, my pride and joy, have almost no buds and are about half the size they were. Red squirrels ate almost all the buds of the big white rhododendron at the back—the day after I had seen how big and fat the buds were and rejoiced. Mice, voles or chipmunks ate fifty tulip bulbs from the terrace border, twenty from the shady border where the begonias are, twenty at least from the narrow upper border on the terrace. Only along the fence about twenty survived. Fifty were eaten in one end of the picking garden. Altogether a disastrous year.
I have reached again a hard place in my illnesses. I am on the edge of anger all the time. Lonely, desperately when no one is here, and then exhausted if anyone is. I seem to be an impossible person who, as Marynia Farnham used to say about certain people, should be shot at dawn.
All the people who have always had instant response from me still expect to—and they are not few. So instead of keeping this journal, I try to answer—an
d instead of answering well as I used to, break down and cry because I can’t.
I have not been able to listen to music since early January but now I have put the Fauré Requiem on, and as I listen I see I must listen. I must get celestial food again and try to live on another plane, get down deep enough so all this doesn’t matter.
Monday, June 2
Last night we went over to Beverly and Mary-Leigh so Pat could see World of Light, the beautiful documentary film Martha Wheelock and Marita Simpson made about me some years ago. It was during a thunderstorm which lasted for five hours. I went home after the film and left Pat to be introduced to Mary-Leigh’s and Beverly’s treasure house of paintings and works of art. With the wild storm outside it seemed rather a long visit, so at eleven I called and suggested she had better come home. At times lately I sound and behave like my grandmother who could be rather sharp. Oh dear. Pierrot was a great help, unafraid of the blazing flashes of lightning and roars of thunder, he lay on his back beside me purring loudly.
Wednesday, June 4
During one of our long good talks I said to Pat, “I must somehow get onto another plane”—and this morning when I woke at five I decided to lie there and think of all the good things in my life now. One is surely waking in my wide bedroom, with its casement windows (which I believe resemble those at Wondelgem where I used to wake as a baby) and sense of space and light. The light I see first is the brilliant blue and red of the stained glass phoenix which hangs high up on the glass door to the outdoor porch. Then if I look to the left my eyes rest on “the hills of home,” an abstract painting over the fireplace that Anne Woodson painted using, as though buried under those hills, ancient slate headstones from the Nelson cemetery. Above the hills, a solid blue sky.
