—but I have since come to admire Pearl greatly for making what I now feel was a very courageous decision. Surely Brian was fortified and comforted as he went into battle, knowing that he was so dearly loved.
Starling House is meant to help women like Pearl, war-widows struggling to support young children on a pittance of a pension. The kiddies stay there while their mothers work. Isn’t it a splendid idea? Leslie asked only for a donation, and I have made one, but I think I have more to give these little ones than pounds sterling.
To be frank, I am not cut out to be a lady of leisure. Although I now have the means, I lack the experience. In fact, it sounds like very hard work. I suppose I could sit with the Pym sisters knitting socks all day, but I’d much sooner change nappies and tell stories and give these brave women some peace of mind.
Mad I may be, but I think it a useful sort of madness, a sort you understand quite well, since you suffer from similar delusions.
My mother’s “useful sort of madness” had sent her back to college in pursuit of a degree in education. Despite exams, term papers, and long hours at the library, she managed to write at least twice a month.
D,
Midterms! Yoicks! And you thought D day was a big deal!
I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying all of this. Joe says that I’m regressing and I do hope he’s right. After all of those gray years in London, I think I’ve earned a second childhood, don’t you?
I’ve put student teaching on hold while I study. I’m not happy about it, but there are only so many hours in the day and I have to spend most of them in the library. I miss the day-to-day contact with kids, though. Makes me wonder when on earth Joe and I are going to have our own. We’re still trying, but nothing seems to work, up to and including the garlic you forwarded from the Pyms. Thank them for me, will you? And just between you and me—how would a pair of spinsters be acquainted with the secret to fertility?
The two friends talked about everything that touched their lives. As my mother grew increasingly despondent over the lack of a family of her own, Dimity wrote to her about “Mrs. Bedelia Farnham, the greengrocer’s wife, who delivered healthy triplets—Amelia, Cecelia, and Cordelia, my dear, if you will credit it—shortly after her forty-third birthday” and exhorted her not to lose hope. When Dimity wondered how she could bear to see another war-torn family, my mother responded with characteristic common sense:
Does the word “vacation” mean anything to you? How about “holiday”? I’ve copied the dictionary definitions on a separate sheet of paper, in case you have trouble remembering. Take one, and write me when you get back.
I’m serious, Dimity. It’s no good, wearing yourself down like this. It’s not good for you and it’s certainly not good for the children. I know I’m stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.
So take some time off. Paddle your feet in a brook. Read a pile of books and eat apples all day. Remind yourself that there’s joy in the world as well as sadness. Then go back to work and remind the kids.
*
I fixed sandwiches for a late afternoon lunch, and Bill’s disappeared so rapidly that I thought I had scored another culinary coup, until he happened to mention that he hadn’t had any breakfast. I hastily made him another, a thick slab of roast beef on grainy brown bread, and sent him into the living room to eat it, ordering him to leave me alone in the kitchen until I called for him. The letters could wait. It was time for me to heed Dimity’s advice and start making amends.
In no time at all, I produced a truly scrumptious double batch of oatmeal cookies. I was so proud that I was tempted to go upstairs and fetch my camera, to record the historic moment. It sounds foolish, I know, but if you’d burned as many hard-boiled eggs as I had, you’d understand.
I could almost hear my mother humming in the warm, cinnamon-scented air, and I hoped Dimity was around to enjoy it, but the best moment came when Bill took his first bite. A look of utter bliss came to his face and he closed his eyes to concentrate on chewing. Then, without saying a word, he picked up the cookie jar and carried it back with him to the study.
*
Later that evening, I tried my hand at onion soup and a quiche lorraine, and Bill seemed more than happy to test the results. He had three helpings of the quiche. Sometime after we’d finished our dinner break and gone back to our reading, he leaned forward and held a letter out to me. “Here’s one I think you should read.” He shook his head when I looked up expectantly. “Nothing to do with Dimity.”
“Go ahead and read it aloud, then,” I said.
“I think you’ll want to read this one to yourself. Here, take it.”
“But what’s so special about—”
“The date, Lori. Look at the date.”
The letter he was holding had been written by my mother on the day after my birth. I took it from him, bent low over the page, and inhaled the words.