Against Wind and Tide Read online

  Now—before I forget—bits from Chicago: Meeting the scientists. On the whole how ordinary these people are when they come out of the tunnel of their specialty! What children they seem in the field of living & feeling & being aware. How impractical, too, some of them. Like artists—but inarticulate ones. Like musicians, childlike—simple—wrapped in the cocoon of their own world. And since I only see them from the outside—when they come blinking out of their tunnel I cannot imagine what they are really like. Yes I can just imagine—because I can remember that feeling myself—when I have been drunk, drenched in something I was writing. Then coming out into the sunshine & activity of ordinary life—dazzled—dizzy—blinking—like a mole. I remember Yeats: “I was still under the influence of my three months’ concentration on my work & was like those people in a religious meditation who if you lay a finger on an arm show a bruise where you touched them.”

  Fermi—who has perhaps the most to do with the Atomic Bomb development—is the most interesting & appealing to me.

  This quiet little unassuming man—with kind, observant eyes—not wise exactly but observant—& a kind of humility—like a monk—gentle & quiet & unassuming. Is humility an attribute of all greatness? (Huxley’s “Stand before fact as a little child.”) I should like to think so.

  Is the scientist—the true scientist—akin to the artist & the saint? In his humility before something greater than himself—in his looking on himself as a tool—a vessel—a road? In his childlikeness—in his simplicity? I had not thought so before, but Fermi makes me think of it. Perhaps—I must explore the idea.

  Scott’s Cove, Darien, Conn.

  July 8th, 1948

  Dear Jon,

  How are you?! We have gotten some nice weather. Fine over the Fourth. (The first weekend it didn’t rain for five weeks!) We all went swimming. Anne, like a fish, Scott, hunting and playing, and Reeve on your father’s back: “Go Boat! Stop Boat!” We are still eating your fish and have had some delicious clam chowders. There are still too many horseshoe crabs on our beach.

  Your father’s book* is coming out (condensed) in the September Reader’s Digest.

  A word to the wise, Jon, send a postcard now and then! Your father is looking for one. I think I prefer the camp where they don’t feed you Sunday dinner until you write your parent. (I think Land gave this one away!) Anyway, your director wrote us, so we know you arrived. Not a letter—just send a postcard now and then.†

  Breakfast

  “What kind of eggs, Scott?”

  “Scrambled egg.”

  Anne: “I want a poached egg.”

  Reeve: “I want a chicken egg.”

  Your corn is coming up, believe it or not, and the children’s lettuce—smothered in weeds.

  Scott’s Cove

  July 29th, 1948

  Dear Mrs. Goodkind,

  My husband and I have just come back from a trip away to find Mr. Wilson’s letter on the desk telling us of the tragedy which struck your son at the camp he shared this summer with our son, Land.* Since the news came we have been unable to think of anything else, unable to accept such a thing happening, unable not to think of you and share with you the shock of that tragedy.

  I feel I must write you, though I know that letters cannot help one to accept an arbitrary, unbelievable, unwarned accident. Nothing helps perhaps but another time-sense, another spiritual point of vision, which those in the midst of sorrow seem to have better than those of us on the outside.

  I remember someone writing me—with our loss—sudden, unpredictable, unbelievable also—a little verse which gave me some of this vision.†

  It is not growing like a tree.

  In bulk, doth make man better be;

  Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

  To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere:

  A lily of a day

  Is fairer far in May.

  Although it fall and die that night—

  It was the plant and flower of light.

  In small proportions we just beauties see,

  And in short measures life may perfect be.‡

  I write from my heart. We could not help but let you know how our thoughts and our sympathy are with you.

  Point House*

  Labor Day, September 6th, 1948 [DIARY]

  Then followed a month of quiet work in this house. A month of learning a new technique of work—trying out a new system. Getting my business (household, head of family) done before ten. Then coming over here & working through lunch in solitude—a picnic lunch—rest & an hour or two of work in the p.m. Back about four or five—for tea etc. with the children. It worked really very well and technically was great gain. The work accomplished was perhaps not equal to the technical gain—I started out trying to pull my “of women’s lives” bits into shape for an article suggested by Harper’s Bazaar—realized I couldn’t do it that way. Wrote Mary Louise Aswell† (in despair) that I couldn’t but she would come out & discuss it with me sometime. And then—in the relief of having given up—got an idea—a form for my material—started writing v. intoxicated—wrote for three weeks. The material now growing to three times its planned length & not finished yet. And had it not outgrown its form? At this point I had to start recalculating—Land’s imminent homecoming—the end of summer—& my own weariness made me face the fact that I had not finished the task I had set myself to do—the summer, with its wonderful quiet ease & freedom for me (two boys & C. away) was over. In the winter I should never be able to get such an opportunity again. If I couldn’t do it now—I should never be able to. This was the best my life offered—I must face it & adjust to it. To come to the end of summer—exactly as I had come to the end of the winter—with only improvements in techniques—with only more experimentations in form—with nothing concrete to show—I felt very low about it.

  Point House

  October 6th, 1948 [DIARY]

  Three weeks passed—one week of hard & good work on “The Shells.”‡ (It looked good to me—when I got to it again after my vacation! What is more, once it was copied & Charles saw it—he was surprised & delighted with it. Thinks it is very good! A justification of my summer’s work! Such a relief.)

  Moving Scott in with Land (two boys together) giving Jon a room of his own. Giving Anne a room of her own (those two need solitude). Reeve into the nursery. A new school for Reeve—etc. etc. All this takes time & is necessary and rewarding for a mother—it is creative in relationships—but takes energy.

  C. has been home for about six weeks (during a change of command in Washington). He is very happy about the success of his book—letters piling in—moving in their sincerity.… I feel at last that C. has given of his real self—& what people have guessed (sometimes) was there—they now know is there. He has opened himself in a way that he never has before to anyone except me—& perhaps a few others. It is a great triumph, too, to win in the world of intellectuals as well as in the world of popular appeal—which he has always had. No one has doubted his sincerity or failed to be moved by it—and all have been startled by the depth of what he had to say & the power & skill with which he said it.

  If he should now die—he would at least have given to the world some of that unexpressed & most important side of him. I have always wanted him to do so—always worked with him for such an end—always prayed it would happen. And yet now that it has—I find myself in a curiously anticlimax state of feeling. (Of course, one feels thus after a book of one’s own is published—a “well—that’s that—now what?” feeling.) I cannot analyze it away. Is it a kind of envy of his entering my field & with such colossal success & at a moment when I am not very creative? And yet I am so pleased when perceptive people speak or write of it. Perhaps it is only that my shock of surprise—satisfaction at his writing of it—lies months—years, even—back. After all he has been writing it for years—parts of it. And so I cannot be newly excited about it. I had my surprise & pleasure back there.

  Or perhaps it is only part o
f this cocoon period in me—when new things are growing in me—& I am somehow shut off from my old feelings, my old forms, my old relationships & I cannot feel as I should. A queer uncomfortable period—I feel locked out of the rooms I used to frequent—not by anyone else—by something of my own doing. I have lost the key.…

  Darien, Conn.

  October 27th, 1948

  Dear Mrs. Goodkind,

  I meant to write you after your first letter. I was so moved by it that I could not read it without tears—not only by the sorrow but by your courage and awareness and openness.

  As for myself, I feel there is so little I can tell you that would be helpful. My first grief I feel I survived only through nature, through the fact that nature numbed me. I was carrying another child and I survived for that child. The self-protective instinct of nature pulled me through: a numb, blind, unconscious way through. (Perhaps the psychiatrists would say I never faced it and it is still there to be accepted. I do believe that there are times in one’s life when one must accept—swallow whole, as it were—the “locked boxes” in one’s life, unopened, unsolved. This is the hardest thing of all, I think—that undigested lump in one’s heart.)

  The second sorrow—a very close sister*—was in a way more difficult, and I wrestled, like you, with the problem of immortality. For myself it did not matter, as you say, but for her it was unbearable. As near as I could come to a solution was a strong instinctive belief in the immortality of the spirit and that growth of the spirit is the point of all life. But I feel unable to be convinced in the pilgrim’s progress beautiful literal faith of joining one’s fellows in the same identical form across the river. I finally accepted the “locked box” of not understanding in what form the spirit would survive—even if it were only in the great stream of compassion that feeds the world. (Though I tend to feel it is more individual than this—the individual candles swallowed in the great light and yet not extinguished by it.)

  The third grief† brought only an intensification of this belief in spirit, and somehow an added feeling of the omnipresence of it here, now, everywhere. As if, in a way, people who have lost those close to them have stepped across an invisible boundary line into the realm of spirit, are already in the real world of spiritual values which co-exists with the other period. I feel quite strongly this sense of interpenetration.

  I gradually grew to feel this about my sister. It is a terrific responsibility too, to let them shine through you!

  What I feel most like saying is Do not try too hard. You have done such a heroic job as it is, a superhuman one to fit a superhuman tragedy. You have met it with a vision that is superhuman too, at times. But we are human, too. And vision does not last, it only comes fitfully in lightning flashes to show us the way. Do not be ashamed or afraid of the dark patches of night in between the flashes. You cannot have the vision all the time. You would have to be dead to have that. And believe in the moments of illumination—they are the true ones. The black hours are when your very human, and overburdened with blows, body seeks the earth. It is natural and I think perhaps one should give in to it if one can. I once heard a very wise man say: “Live the four seasons every day of your life: plow, and sow, and reap—yes—and winter too. Every day one must die. One must die part of every day.”

  I think I, and perhaps you, tried to sow and reap every hour of the day.

  Do not try to be too brave. For us of Puritan background it is hard to do otherwise. I know it was for my mother,* who bore in quick succession the death of husband, grandson, and daughter. As we went through the last together, each trying to be brave in front of the other—it seems to me now that this being brave in front of each other was a false Puritan reticence and perhaps even pride. The times when we really helped each other were when we broke down and cried together. I know it was a help to me to admit, and see admitted, my mother’s grief. I could lay down for a moment the burden of being courageous. (Though I do not think it was weakness to do that, but humility.)

  Do not ask too much of yourself too quickly. I wish there were some kind of earth-person there, on whose shoulder you could cry. But so often there is not.

  Who takes you up and bears you on his breast is your own courage—and it may come late.

  Please forgive me if I have said the wrong things. I feel really you have your vision already, only you are not strong enough to believe it day and night.

  [NOVEMBER 16, 1948, DIARY]

  At last I have got the Moon Shell copied … repetitious, contradictory, unbeautiful, unwhole … just a first draft—is it too much for me?

  Scott’s Cove, Darien

  Monday after New Year, 1949

  Dear C.,

  Another letter from you today! From Guam—written on Christmas Day. I wonder if you are in Europe by now. I have seen nothing in the papers. I read your letter to the boys tonight. Jon’s eye glinted at the aerial gunnery accomplishments. I also gave Jon your letter from Japan to read, a very good one on our (U.S.A.) insulation from the worlds we speed over and conquer. You are right: it is insulation not isolation. I sent this letter to your mother, though I know you write her too. The children have sent pictures and I send their things (a theme of Jon’s, a picture of Anne).

  New Year’s Day we all were together and alone as a family and we played a game and all guessed where you were. Anne said China (I think), Jon said Japan, Land, India, Reeve, “Elastic!” (Alaska). I said, “In the air!” And the children all said that wasn’t fair, so then I guessed Germany. Scott refused to guess!

  New Year’s Day we all went out for the first time in days. It was clear and bright after four days steady rain (causing floods all through New England, after the heavy snow), ending with sleet and snow New Year’s Eve. The world looked quite beautiful again and we looked for animal tracks in the snow. Then we came in, had lunch, naps, and then I put on Swan Lake and a Mexican skirt and we all danced wildly and gaily!*

  I went out New Year’s Eve for “music” after supper. Very nice, respectable party with Bach on the organ until twelve, when we all joined hands and the lights went off. “And everyone kissed everyone else,” as I told the children the next day. Jon was amused, Anne and Scott wide-eyed. But Land was frankly startled and shocked.

  “What! Did anyone kiss you?”

  “Yes—two people!”

  “What—someone you didn’t even know? Hasn’t a woman any protection? I wouldn’t like my wife … I bet you don’t tell Father!”

  “Yes, I will, Land. I’ll write him and he won’t mind (very much)! You see, I didn’t kiss anyone myself. I didn’t want to; I just got kissed. And your father knows I’d rather have him kiss me than anyone else in the world!”

  This silenced them all for a moment. It seemed solemn and impressive and they were quite pleased. Even Land seemed appeased. But Ansy* objected. “You’d rather have him kiss you than me—or Reeve??” What a conversation!!!!

  It is 10:30 and I must go to bed. I’ll add a line in the morning before I go to the Point House—for the day! Come home soon!

  Eastern Airlines—D.C. 4—Jacksonville—Richmond

  Saturday Eve., April 23rd, 1949

  Dearest C.,

  I have been thinking about you all day, sitting on the bus and watching the coast flick by: markers and harbors, bridges. I saw with Aldebaran eyes:† boat-conscious, sea-conscious—as I used to be plane-conscious, air-conscious. Following you with my thoughts all day—now they are pulling out of the dock—now C. is stacking up the icebox—now perhaps they are swimming—now … with a pang of longing to be there … putt-putting back to the big boat in the sunset. (My sunset was very beautiful on the deltas north of Jacksonville—wide ribbons of river like ribbons of smoke curling off in the distance.) And now, how homesick I feel for it! (They are sitting around that table in the hot smoky cabin: Jon, taciturn and contented; Land, sleepy and contented; Jim, gay; and you—what are you doing? Wondering if I made the plane, if I got a coat, shoes—if I was recognized, etc.)


  Flying always makes me think of you and our life together. What worlds you have opened up to me: the world of the air, the world of practical life, even the underwater world! And I am always timid about new worlds. I must learn to go into new worlds on my own. And you must forgive my awkwardness in your worlds.

  I have thought, too, of you and me down on Pelican Beach—turning over lazily and covering up for planes, me, even if they were miles high, and your saying: “Think of that world up there. People in city clothes, stewards and stewardesses passing trays” (all cooped up in civilization!). And here I am cooped up in one of those worlds!