After the Stroke

by May Sarton

  San Antonio, Saturday, November 15

  This has not been as glamorous a time as Albuquerque and Santa Fe were, partly because the weather has been really bad. Heavy freezing rain on Wednesday kept the audience away and only about two hundred brave souls showed up to sit in the vast chilly auditorium. John Igo gave a charming introduction but even after that I found it hard to connect—a little dismayed by the lack of laughter from what seemed like miles away, the blurred faces of the frozen people.

  The extreme cold continued on Thursday so it was out of the question to discover and enjoy what I longed to see, the famous river and all the restaurants and shops along it.

  [I did not see the river but I did meet Jean Anderson who had flown in from Seattle to hear me read. I felt we were old friends although we have only corresponded, and during my illness she sent me beautiful restorative cards, more than one a week, and was very present during that hard time. Jean is a musician and conducts and trains choirs and groups who want to make music together. We drank many cups of tea while it rained outside and I was grateful for that unhurried exchange.]

  Coleen Grissom, dean of Freshmen and professor of English at Trinity University, did take me for a short walk yesterday, so I finally saw the river and mightily enjoyed it though there was no sun.

  Meanwhile Kathy Armstrong and her assistant, Bertha Ann, took me on drives to “see the town”—and out for two splendid lunches. Kathy and her husband recently adopted a baby, now two, and I loved hearing about that.

  On Thursday and Friday I talked informally, first about writing a novel, then about journal-keeping, and the word had got around so the low-ceilinged, attractive room was packed and the atmosphere a lot easier to function in. There were even flowers on the table—and what a difference that made!

  San Antonio College is a two-year college open to all high school graduates, and they are doing difficult but rewarding work with men and women who need help in the skills they will have to have to get jobs. John Igo, who has been recognized as a great teacher, spoke glowingly about his methods. While I was talking about the novel, one of his classes had been left with corrected papers of theirs to go over. John marks mistakes but asks them to discover for themselves what the mark implies and in this they help each other. I would like to be a fly on that wall!

  Coleen Grissom had spread the word and was partly responsible for the crowd, I gather. As far as I know, there was no flyer and very little, if any, newspaper publicity.

  Last night, after our walk along the river, she took me out to Trinity and the contrast was illuminating. Trinity is a beautiful campus alive with fountains, groves of live oak, a magnificent chapel designed as the hull of a ship. There is a Hepworth sculpture outdoors and also a Henry Moore. Here there is money and privilege, and the difference is tangible between Trinity and San Antonio College.

  What a joy it was then to see Coleen’s home and meet her two merry, super-active black miniature poodles—one of which climbed into my lap and licked my face. Coleen’s cat kept her distance.

  I had a short rest there before guests for dinner arrived, and we had a drink with a wood fire burning in the fireplace and then were taken out to an elegant French restaurant. Good talk and marvelous food made a splendid finale to this not altogether easy chapter in my journeyings.

  Tuesday, November 18

  It took me from nine in the evening to one in the morning when I got back last Saturday simply to read the first class mail. It is like being at the center of a whirlpool after just ten days away! What makes it hard to handle is the diversity of what meets me here: requests to pay attention from dear women in nursing homes; from a friend going in today for major surgery; two birthdays requiring packages and notes to send off; a letter asking me to be on a Ph.D committee for Union College—hard to refuse; plus all the personal and business mail. Then, meeting all this, I must first look back with thanks for many kindnesses by my hosts and friends in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and San Antonio. So I spent most of Sunday packing up books to send and writing notes of thanks.

  It is hard to feel so driven that I cannot even mourn Tamas although I got his ashes yesterday and held the surprisingly heavy box to my heart. I shall bury them close to Bramble’s. Someone along the road handed me a newspaper clipping about the death of a dog. The writer quoted Lord Byron as follows:

  Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all of the virtues of man, without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery, if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to Botswain, a dog.

  One of the letters I read when I got home was a letter from Amelie Starkey to Tamas. Here are portions of it:

  We will miss you, gentle sentry. I see your picture by my bed and sadness takes its toll. Fifteen years of joy and faithfulness for you and May—dear welcomer, so unaware.

  You came that Easter day with a limping run and joyful barks to greet me when I was halfway to the door. I stayed at least five minutes to relish the welcome and the joy and to calm my nerves.

  I remember now, you, a loving brother to Bramble, aware of when she wanted to go in or out. I wondered as I watched May coax your limping body up the stairs. And I thought this—Tamas is putting himself through all that pain to comfort May—and comfort for those of us who came. You taught us well what welcome is. I bless you, gentle sentry, and I grieve, for you are gone.

  Amelie is right that Tamas was a wonderful builder of bridges between a guest I had not met before and me. He eased the meeting.

  Wednesday, November 19

  Quite a big snow, maybe six inches, fell in the night and Pierrot is not amused! Bramble loved the snow, loved the delightful clean place to dig a hole in, tail up, rushed up trees. She and Tamas both played in it—Tamas half lying down and pushing his nose through it sideways.

  Snow lights up somber November. Nancy and I talked about how somber it was here yesterday on our expedition to buy a copier—which we succeeded in doing. Spending so much money makes me feel drained but I think it’s going to be marvelous to make quick copies of anything we want to keep.

  Then we celebrated with lunch at Luka’s, the friendly Greek restaurant in Portsmouth—even to strawberry shortcake!

  At the A&P I found a perfectly ripe persimmon and ate it last night, thinking of my father who loved them. It reminded me of Proust’s madeleine—the persimmon that brings the whole lost world of Channing Place to life.

  I’m going to try to get out to have my permanent but nothing is plowed yet here on the estate so it’s a risk—but fun.

  Louisville, Saturday, November 22

  I did get out through the lovely silent woods and the trees in ermine cloaks—and so am properly coiffed. But that was Wednesday and for the next two days I concentrated on correspondence, hoping to leave this time not quite as haunted as usual by the undone. And I wrote seventy-five letters last week so things are not as awesomely “not done” as they were.

  Yesterday I looked out at five and saw Venus, very brilliant and huge, in the early dawn, in the center of the sky over a shot-silk, bluish-gray ocean. A beautiful sunny day for leaving for my next adventure on the road.

  I was astonished to find long lines at the airport—the Thanksgiving people already flocking home, lots of babies and tots—what a curious word “tot” is—and young men and women as laden with baggage as camels—a rather uncomfortably crowded plane.

  I had to change in Dayton and looked down gratefully on the descent at the squares and wood lots of small farms—such a welcome sight. The white silos, white barns and houses make me hope this area may be spared foreclosings and disaster.

  At Dayton the plane to Louisville was half-empty. I sat beside, one seat away from, a distinguished gentleman I had observed while we waited to embark. He was reading a thick white book I seemed to recognize—but what was it? I found out that it was QPBC’s paperback of four of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s
novels! I told him how delighted I was and we began to talk. It turned out that he has a brother crazy about reading who lives in Northeast Harbor. He guessed who I was and had read At Seventy—guessed when I said I was signing books that afternoon. So he introduced himself, Cyrus McKinnon, an editor of the Courier-Journal. Perfect weather as we landed in Louisville added to my sense of elation.

  Louisville, Monday, November 24

  A new happening for me was to have the audience for “The View From Here” moved to a larger auditorium after most had been settled and waiting—what a procession of people of all ages made their way down a flight to an auditorium seating five hundred, and it was jammed. Then the young man who carried a jug of water for me spilled it all over the podium and the floor, and the charming English professor who introduced me—a woman—called for more paper towels and went at wiping it up with such efficiency that the audience cheered—altogether a happy expectant atmosphere when I got to my feet.

  I did do well. I felt launched on all the enthusiasm, extra strength, gas in the motor—and did not feel tired enough to sit down in the middle as I often do. But I cut the reading down to forty-five minutes. It was after four-thirty when I rose to my feet and there was more book signing to do then.

  Saturday afternoon after just an hour to rest and unpack, the book signing in the huge Hawley-Cooke bookstore was a jam of people, many bringing six or seven books for me to sign. I didn’t stop for an hour and a half! Then off to a dinner party arranged because Maggie Vaughan had come all the way from Hallowell, Maine, to hear me read, bringing two friends. Our hostess, Mrs. John Llewellyn, was just back from Paris. So it was a good example of Louisville hospitality to put on a dinner party that night.

  I stayed with Mrs. James Smith with all the comforts possible in her charming town house, including an elevator, and on Sunday she invited a number of people for brunch, including some of the Hospice people who had initiated my coming to Louisville, although I was sponsored in the end by the university, the Council of the Arts and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

  But I wanted to go to Louisville chiefly to learn more about Hospice and to meet Vicki Runnion who had written more than a year ago to ask me if I would be available. She gave a potluck supper Sunday evening where all the guests were social workers or at Hospice, and I felt at home and happy to be with them—one of the best times I have had for quite a while.

  Nashville, Wednesday, November 26

  It was a long drive from Louisville yesterday in mist and at times heavy rain, but it did give Vicki and me a chance for a long good talk, as she had offered to drive me here. That and the whole day on Monday when Vicki took me to see Farmington, an exquisite house designed by Jefferson, where Keats Whiting’s mother was born. It was then a plantation, but after the war they had to move to Louisville where Keats’s mother married a Northerner, and so Keats was brought up in New England.

  I felt the same rush of admiration and love for Jefferson’s genius as we walked around as I did fifty years ago when I first saw Monticello and wrote:

  This legendary house, this dear enchanted tomb,

  Once so supremely lived in, and for life designed,

  Will none of moldy death nor give it room,

  Charged with the presence of a living mind.*

  Down in the cellar where there were Christmas tree ornaments for sale, I bought five little white birds—for of course the fire last year destroyed all the ornaments Judy and I had collected. It seemed a gesture of hope and of recovering to think of a small tree this year, a tree Huldah is sending.

  Vicki then drove me a long way through the gentle fields, punctuated by cedars, the many small farms which here at least appear to be flourishing, to the Mother house of the Sisters of Loretto. She had told me about Jeanne Dueber, one of the sisters, and the remarkable gallery of her sculpture we would find there, but I was not prepared for such original and powerful genius. Jeanne Dueber uses chiefly huge branches and roots of fallen trees—holly, sycamore, oak, even willow—which she scavenges and manages to lift somehow into her truck though she is not five feet tall. They are then seasoned for from two to eight years—there was a big pile on the porch of Rhodes Hall, the gallery. And finally she begins to find the heart of a trunk or root and works with it to create huge pieces, sometimes reminiscent of early works of Henry Moore. Jeanne seems to be wholly innocent of how to get financial help, was surprised when I advised her to ask for recommendations! I am determined to do something about this.

  Jeanne Dueber is as compact and pared down as her work, and one senses at once that she knows what she is doing, that it has come out of years of very hard work and little support. At first the Sisters used to come and look at her huge pieces and shake their heads. She felt she had “made it” when at last a Sister looked and nodded.

  Going there, finding this sensitive genius struggling and creating such marvels was a great adventure. But as I think over the three rich Louisville days, what seems the greatest blessing was to see Hospice there through the eyes of this remarkable young woman, Vicki Runnion.

  She told me of an old woman she had visited for two years and for whom, as she lay dying in the hospital, Vicki sang all night—hymns, folk songs. Whenever she finished a song, the old woman opened her eyes and nodded, so Vicki sang on—until the old woman died in peace, companioned to the end.

  * “Monticello” from Collected Poems; Norton, 1974.

  Nashville, Thanksgiving Day, November 27

  A thankful day. I think over all the peak experiences of this autumn, starting with the spirit-nourishing days with the Carmelites. I think of being with Lou and Rene in their all-welcoming house in Albuquerque and Amelie Starkey from Denver coming for supper there before my reading. I think of seeing Beryl and Ted in Santa Fe and a chance at last to talk with Agi, of going to Santuario, so alive with memories of Judy and our days together in Santa Fe. I think of the kindness in Louisville, and the adventure of seeing the work of genius, the heavy roots brought alive by Sister Jeanne Dueber, and of the wonderful talks with Vicki Runnion. And now I am thankful for this life-enhancing friendship with Howie and Mary Boorman, this serene house full of Chinese masterpieces in transparent jade, Peking glass—the great Kwannon who presides. Here I am taken care of as I am nowhere else, and it is precious to be allowed to be a childlike self who lays down every burden today, even to writing at length in this journal, and rests in “worlds of balm.”

  We go to Huldah’s for the feast; she looked beautiful last night at the party here.

  Nashville, Sunday, November 30

  Social life, however much fun it is, is not what one wants to talk about in a journal where gossip seems inappropriate. I have been coming to Nashville since Huldah’s first invitation ten years ago—and in ten years one has to face the inescapable struggle and tragedies that have happened to people—and the elegant life-enhancing way they manage to survive. Here in Nashville, Martha Lindsey, over eighty, gives a luncheon party for a few of us tomorrow, for instance. At eighty shall I have the joie de vivre in me to do that? Grace and Carl Zibart have had their life mutilated by the death of their only son, but she gave a lunch for me, inviting John Halperin and Anne Street, where over Cajun oysters and rice we talked literature excitedly and all agreed that Anne Tyler is a genius. In York I see almost no one who reads, so this kind of talk is a real pleasure.

  Mary Boorman has had many illnesses in the past two years. But here she is as luminous and life-giving as ever, like the extraordinary white Christmas cactus in her window which is a delicate snow-white cascade of flowers that take one’s breath away.

  Nashville, Monday, December 1

  I am homesick for Pierrot and, really, for my own life again—for solitude. Yet I have loved being in this beautiful room with its peaceful gray-green walls with time to think about Tamas and to remember him as the extraordinarily sensitive being he was.

  A young man who came to the book signing in Louisville gave me two books—Thomas Merton on soli
tude and Teilhard de Chardin’s Letters From a Traveller. He wanted to share them with me and I have found Merton nourishing bread. For instance:

  To love solitude and to seek it does not mean constantly travelling from one geographical possibility to another. A man becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary. From that moment, solitude is not potential—it is actual.*

  I believe that my mother experienced this, recognized it, early in her marriage—and that I myself learned it from her. It comes up more than once in her letters. Curiously enough, once it has been admitted, one is no longer lonely.

  In his preface Merton says:

  In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one’s own reality and of one’s ability to give himself to society—or to refuse that gift.

  When men are merely submerged in a mass of personal human beings pushed around by automatic forces, they lose their true humanity, their integrity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination. When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.