Free The House by the Sea by May Sarton Page B

wanted to get away at once to think them over. “For me, Rosalind was a hero,” I had heard a young man say just a few moments before.

Sunday, March 16th
    I HAVE SOME sort of low-grade infection and finally went to see Dr. Rosenfeld on Friday … so now I am stuffed with antibiotics and am a large heavy bag of resistance to any effort whatsoever. Giving up has it rewards—yesterday I lay around all day, sometimes on my bed upstairs, sometimes on the chaise longue on the porch, looking at the flowers. I enjoyed the lovely rooms in which I live, the light, the spaciousness, and read a little in Francis Huxley’s book on The Way of the Sacred which came in the mail yesterday. It is full of taut, dense definitions which one can ponder for a few minutes before proceeding.
    Two days ago the purple finches came back … lovely to lie still and watch the wings coming and going from the feeders. Masses of evening grosbeaks have been here for the past months; now the goldfinches and purple finches are together—such a display of color! After the northeaster that blew in on Friday, bringing a little snow, the mourning dove appeared.
    I did manage to walk Tamas yesterday, our feet the first on the new snow except for one set of tires. We take the same walk every day, about a mile on the dirt roads that circle the big swamp at the back. The road goes through a variety of woodsy scenes, first a grove of hemlock and birches, the birches lovely against the bright blue winter skies. After a while we come to an open field, rising slightly to a huge white pine that defines the scene. What a pleasure to come to these open spaces from the deep woods! Then our road curves away around the swamp and we walk through a tunnel of beeches, and finally turn right at the gate to the property, having come full circle.
    Bramble almost always comes with us, staying about twenty paces behind, but sometimes dashing up, her tail waving, to wind around my legs, or sit up like a little black bear to be stroked. Tamas is much too busy on his multiple scents and errands to pay attention to Bramble, but she often makes a fat tail and rushes past him, inviting a chase.
    This daily expedition is an important part of my life here. It airs my head and clears away the tensions of the morning’s work.
    (Except for two entries from March 16th to May 27th there are blank pages because I was too ill to keep the journal going, and just managed to meet lecture and teaching obligations that included two weeks at Ohio Wesleyan as Carpenter lecturer, and the commencement address at Clark University … that I gave in a whisper! )

Monday, May 5th
    D ARK , cold gray with a high wind … will the spring ever come? How I long for one of those still warm days where you can feel the leaves opening in the sun and the roots stirring below! It’s infernal to have to wait so long this year! The only thing that grows is the grass. It needs cutting already. I suppose it is just as well, because I have no time to garden till after May 11th and the commencement address at Clark is over, the last ordeal after tomorrow, when I speak at New England College.
    But yesterday was a memorable postbirthday celebration, for Dorothy Wallace drove Katharine Taylor here for lunch. K.T. (former head of the Shady Hill School) is eighty-six, a frighteningly thin skeleton, walking gingerly with a cane, but the spirit flaming alive, all her wits as keen as ever, and her wonderful genius for being absolutely with whomever she is with, of all and any age, untouched by time. It was a feast of joyful reunion, for I haven’t seen Dorothy for years or heard her marvelous laughter. They were over an hour late because they got lost and I had waited all that time in the cold at Fosters’, the florists, to show them the way in, and had imagined all sorts of horrors, of course. But all that was forgotten in the warmth and joy of our talk by the fire, drinks, lobsters, and