Dear Rita,
I’m so glad you emerged from your house and turned your face toward the sun. I was worried, to say the least. But then, I worry all the time. It’s some sort of low hum in the back of my mind. Do we all have it? A nation—a world—of constant worry?
I worry all the time about receiving my own telegram. Thank you for extending me the courtesy that I so rashly did not extend to you last year. I feel even more foolish now, if that’s possible.
I worry about the boy who delivered your telegram. All those boys delivering all that bad news. What memories will they bring with them into their lives? Too much worry all around.
So... I suppose the best thing for both of us to do is to just try and move ahead. We can’t move on...that’s impossible. But we can go onward.
And so it’s the middle of a beautiful spring here in Rockport. I don’t know how to explain the beauty of my garden. The amazing growth. How things can be so healthy when the world is so in trouble I will never understand. Things have slowed down quite a bit here. Fewer people show up for the Women to Work meetings. Everyone is so busy with their own housework and end of the school year preparations. Also, after that hard winter, I think people are busy being outside. It makes me wonder if I should start to hold outdoor rallies. Maybe even move some of them to Boston as I believe people are becoming tired of me here. What do you think? Should I spend more time there? It’s about three-quarters of an hour by train. An hour if I drive.
Did I ever tell you that I drive? I love to drive. My father taught me how when I was thirteen. He was drunk and annoyed with some people during one of mother’s “Grand Rose” events. He took me out to the back fields and let me tear up the turf in his Model T. He called me a “Speed Demon.”
Mother wasn’t even mad when he told her. He said, “Mother, our girl is a mighty Speed Demon!” And I remember my mother looked at him—not at me—and said, “It’s good of you to teach the child. A woman needs to be as independent as she can be or else the world will use her skirts as handkerchiefs and then toss her in the garbage.”
I was mesmerized by the story of your mother and the suffragettes. I know my mother was part of movements like that, probably because she was so unorthodox. But your mother was just a proud citizen who wanted her own daughter to know her own worth. This is important for me to understand.
I’m learning balance.
The days are long now, so long. Robbie is well recovered from his latest recurrence of the fever, and Levi found a specialist in New Haven (Connecticut) at the medical school. There is a trial of a sort of medicine that will hopefully stop the progression of the disease. We leave next week. Say a prayer.
The other day I was watching the two of them eat lunch on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth out in the yard by the garden. The sunflowers are as tall as Robbie now (he calls them Rita 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...too!) and Levi held Robbie’s hand to his heart and put his own strong hand on Robbie’s wispy chest. “My heart doesn’t want to work sometimes, either. But see? I’m strong. I can do a lot of things,” I heard him say.
But the truth is, they are very different conditions. Levi has a murmur. It doesn’t even really affect him. And that is why he’s so ashamed not to be able to fight.
Oh, well. Life does go on. And as the weather turns warm, my taste buds ache for the flavors of summer! I can barely wait for a plump tomato. I look every day hoping for an early yellow blossom that will promise a big, ripe fruit!
But until then...more beans.
All of my love,
Glory
Baked Beans
Ingredients:
2 cups navy beans (or your favorite dried bean—not lentils or peas, though, they cook too fast)
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar
¼ cup molasses
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon dry mustard
¼ cup chopped white onion
1 cup boiling water
½ pound salt pork
How to make it:
Wash beans, then cover with water and soak overnight and drain well.
Cover with large amount of boiling salted water.
Boil slowly for 1 hour, then drain well.
Combine salt, sugar, molasses, bay leaf, mustard, onion and water, then add to beans.
Pour into bean pot.
Score rind of pork and press into beans leaving rind exposed.
Cover beans with more boiling water and bake at 300°F for 4 hours.
Remove cover for last hour of baking.