After the Stroke (15 page)

She defines the “shared aesthetic” as 1) light, so much the essence of Vermeer's magic and so often mentioned in my work; 2) the woman alone; 3) something that might be called the sacramentalization of ordinary life, the “ordinary” tasks of home-making. This work has given me great joy. Occasionally repetitious, she nevertheless uses a great deal of material, including
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
, and the poems with grace and wisdom. Now I must write and thank her.

Carmelite Monastery, Indianapolis, Thursday, October 9

[What an extraordinary adventure this is and how lucky I am to have been invited to stay with the Carmelites! I am still in a state of blissful astonishment.

But I was rather nervous when Rusty Moe left me here. We had stood outside the medieval fortress before the formidable oak door for a few moments. When it slowly opened and a delightful woman said, “I'm Jean Alice. Welcome, May,” I was unprepared for such easy grace. She looked like a college teacher in a blouse, sweater and skirt, and it never occurred to me that she was the prioress, as I soon learned. And when the door had closed behind Rusty Moe and the outside world, I felt I was in a happy dream.

Jean Alice put my luggage on a luggage cart and wheeled it herself, so we walked alone through the stone corridors and tiny recessed windows looking out on the garden or the cloister. We passed many closed doors which I presumed were doors to the sisters' rooms, and paused for a moment in the chapel, a simple chapel used every day, not the more formal large chapel I was to see later. My quarters proved to be the infirmary. There were flowers from the garden. I did not know it then but learned later that Jean Alice is the gardener and shares my passion for gardening and my madness in ordering seeds and plants when the catalogs come. But what I felt at once was someone acutely sensitive to the needs of others. She left me to unpack, mentioning that she would come and fetch me just before six to go down to supper.

The infirmary lets nature in as it faces French doors to a wide balcony and has windows on both sides, so I was with trees in a haven of beauty and peace. I unpacked and when that was done lay down, listened to the silence, and fell asleep almost at once. I slept for two hours and then worked a while before supper on rearranging the poems for my reading on Sunday. I heard a cardinal somewhere nearby, and saw a lovely big dog roaming around below. The monastery is enclosed in high walls but the planting is quite informal so it is rather like a park, at least what I could see from my windows. The sense of enclosure, of being separated from the world, is palpable.

Later I learned how privileged I was to be taken in to the inner sanctum, rarely opened to guests even during a retreat. Jean Alice had sent me a postcard before I came with a photograph of the monastery. On the back I read, “At its dedication in 1932 the cloister was closed forever to the public by Bishop Joseph Chartrand.” Jean Alice had underlined “forever” and written beside it, “Times have changed!.”

There was a reason for my warm welcome. Jean Alice had written, “A friend of mine who has read and appreciated your works for many years gave me
Journal of a Solitude
about ten years ago. You have been part of our stream of reading and reflection ever since.” So I was being welcomed as a friend, with tender regard.]

Carmelite Monastery, Friday, October 10

[It is all so silent and at first the corridors and many closed doors so mysterious and bewildering that I would have been lost without Jean Alice to show me the way down to the first floor where the large dining room is. There I was introduced to ten of the sixteen Carmelites and we sat round a big square table with a votive candle at each place. After grace had been said the conversation began and continued at a lively pace during the whole of supper. I was inundated with questions about my work and realized that some of the sisters had read a lot of Sarton. They were of all ages, each a strong individual. I did not dare ask too many questions but I did learn that they take turns, each cooking for a week at a time. That night we feasted on an eggplant soufflé, carrots and peas, and a light creamy dessert washed down with a choice of rosé or white wine. The atmosphere created by these remarkable women is both innocent and of great depth. How rarely am I asked such cogent questions! How rarely feel so at home, even to our sharing strong feelings about Reagan's policy in South America! About Nicaragua one sister said passionately, “
We
are the oppressors.”

I was in bed by eight. It had been a rich day of experience for me, and I was thankful to be in such a haven because I do still feel frail and a little anxious because of the performances before me.]

This morning I worked hard at cutting
As We Are Now
for the University of Indiana where I am to read it as one of the Patten Foundation Lectures. [It was moving in this instance to follow in my father's footsteps, for he was a Patten Foundation lecturer thirty-one years ago in 1954–55, when he gave six lectures on men of science in the Renaissance that were published as a book,
Six Wings
. He spent a month in Bloomington. By comparison, my own effort is minimal, a reading of
As We Are Now
, by request, and a reading of poems. I am nervous because reading
As We Are Now
must be a sustained dramatic performance and I quail before that immense effort.] Probably I won't feel as ill when that ordeal is over on Tuesday.

This morning I also planned the poetry reading for Hermitage here, got it all organized with the lavender slips marked and titled at the proper pages, so this day has been very good, peaceful and workful.

Then I left the medieval world and was taken out to lunch by one of Anne Thorp's nieces, Helen Knowles Glancy, who arrived full of charm and full of questions about
The Magnificent Spinster
, where her aunt appears as Jane Reid. I am so happy that she liked the book and apparently spread it around the family when it came out. She had brought a book of photos of Greening's Island and of the whole family gathered there for three days after Anne's death to divide things up and, I presume, to decide what was to be done with the houses. When I came back I was so filled with nostalgia for that vanished world I was close to tears.

Judy and I spent about ten days on the island every summer for seventeen years. In a way it gave me a feeling of being sheltered, not responsible for life, what it does for me now to be here in this marvelous monastery—where I am the beneficiary of all the work the Carmelites do to keep the life here rooted in order and peace.

The chapel is very simple with chairs arranged informally as though in a living room—centered by a round table. Nothing showy—a great sense of intimacy with the Lord.

Here I am able to sit for hours just watching the light come and go. Today, a brilliant day, sun through the leaves which have not changed yet, so it is still very green.

Carmelite Monastery, Sunday, October 12

[In a few moments I am going to Mass just across the hall from my room. Undoubtedly, it had been planned to place the infirmary adjoining the small chapel so the sick can participate. The liturgy on Sunday is ecumenical so a few men and women were finding their places and Jean Alice came over to me to say softly that I would be welcome to share in the Eucharist. I felt tears starting behind my eyes. It is the starving for true religious experience that brings on weeping. I cannot help it. I was rather nervous when I sat down in a corner alone, but was soon absorbed in this unusually open way of celebrating Mass. The priest sits in an ordinary chair and simply stands to deliver the homily. The hour was filled with joyful music: Leslie playing the bass viol in one corner, another member of the community a guitar and then Jean Alice's soprano soaring up over everyone else's voice. She is such a small woman that it is amazing to listen to her voice as pure and unselfconscious as a bird's. My friend Rusty Moe from Hermitage had been asked to read the lesson and there he stood in a bright red sweater and white shirt and that made me feel at home. The reading from the New Testament was the healing of the ten lepers, only one of whom, the Samaritan, the outsider, went back to thank Jesus and affirm his faith. And the homily was built around this story.

After the homily the priest sat down and, after a short silence, people in the congregation spoke as the spirit moved them and it felt very much then like a Quaker meeting. Several members had interesting comments to make but the most astounding was Jean Alice's gentle voice saying, “My hands are God's hands.” The sentence reverberated among us in a long silence.

I had much to think about when I went back to my room for a rest and to prepare for the poetry reading at Hermitage in the afternoon, hoping I could do well as several of the Sisters were to be there.

While I lay down, looking out onto trees, I thought about what I had been experiencing here, and felt the powerful magnet a conventual life holds. But people like me who are given a taste of it cannot realize what such a life costs. These Carmelites earn their living by typesetting distinguished religious books. I was shown the big rooms where all this is done, the computers, the presses. That is one side of the work accomplished each day, but there is also the household to be maintained, meals to be cooked and washed up after, laundry to be done. The cooking is shared, but who polishes the endless polished floors, who waxes the furniture? Meanwhile, the true work of the monastery is prayer and meditation—that is what a Carmelite community is all about. I came to see that what looks so peaceful, so full of order, has to be won and re-won every day by hard work. I, as a guest, could feel the charisma because sixteen remarkable women had given it to me as an unearned gift.]

I must not forget to catch up on the last two evenings I shared, first with Skip Sauvain at his home and last evening with Rusty Moe at his house. Rusty is responsible for bringing me here under the auspices of Hermitage, an ecumenical religious center where he is a therapist. I have known them for several years, first as fans, I suppose, then as friends.

Skip is a great gardener—as is his mother—how often this love is inherited! He has a small house with a garden at the back and an adorable
patapouf
of a dog, a delicious scramble of several breeds. Rusty's home is rather splendid, filled with color, high up, looking out on a river or creek through very tall trees. He had made a thick vegetable and meat stew which I'm afraid I insulted when he first told me, “I'm going home to make vegetable soup. Would it be all right for dinner with some bread?” It sounded like a few cabbage leaves and potatoes and I had come a long way!

But the open fire, and the good talk, and what turned out to be an excellent stew shamed me—and we laughed about my reaction to the idea of “mere” vegetable soup.

Bloomington, Monday, October 13

I am a total fool—wanted to wear my white turtleneck sweater this afternoon and found I had left it at the monastery. I do want awfully to go back someday, so maybe leaving it says so plainly.

Rain again. When I was here at the university two years ago, there was such a deluge I thought nobody would show—but they did! A full house.

The reading yesterday went very well—a warm loving audience, and a beautiful introduction by Rusty who read one of my mother's letters. Oh dear, it brought tears to my eyes—then the applause when I got to the podium was so welcoming, so long and enthusiastic, it was hard to receive without breaking down in this ridiculously frail state in which I find myself these days. My legs nearly folded under me but I did sit down for a minute and that helped.

Bloomington, Tuesday, October 14

It was a hard day yesterday, hard to say good-by to the Carmelites—and then I figured out when I finally went to bed a little after eight last night, I had been with people for nearly five hours. First the drive with Harriet Clare to Bloomington, unfortunately in the rain, but it was open rural country all the way. Harriet has two bookstores, one here in Bloomington and one in Indianapolis, and had arranged the book signing for me. Her bookstore is called Dream and Sword (from a line of Amy Lowell's “Books are either dreams or swords”). She took me to her bookstore here before lunch and it was heaven to be in a feminist bookstore. She had Allende's huge novel which I wanted—and Margaret Atwood's just out book of short stories which they will send along. Such an open-armed, welcoming place, with a tiny room at the back where one can read or talk.

We had lunch with her manager here, Sid Razer, and a journalist and poet whom I had met before.

Then at four-thirty someone came to take me to a party for the newly launched “Women and the Arts.” It was fun for me to meet some of the painters in it, one of whom is immersed in
Kinds of Love
at the moment. Her husband is getting his degree here in Comparative Literature. Mary Ellen Brown, who heads Women's Studies here, had just flown back yesterday from a Congress in Jugoslavia!

I had forgotten altogether what the academic atmosphere is like—and felt like a stranger. Tonight is my huge effort, the reading of
As We Are Now.
Susan Gubar is to introduce me.

We had a wonderful Chinese dinner—and a very cheerful easy time—lots of laughter. The dean of faculty, Anna Royce, made the fourth.

Laughing makes me remember that the best thing that happened on Sunday was to read poems to the Carmelite Sisters after supper with them. It was such a happy reading, fragrant with their intelligent warmth and love—and there was one hilarious moment when in the middle of my reading the elegy for poor old Scrabble, they all burst into gales of laughter and it was contagious. The line was

Goodbye, dear Scrabble,

You took much and gave little

But then when I read it again with what follows,

And perhaps that is why

You were greatly loved