Tuesday, June 17th

MY THROAT is again very sore. Yesterday I called Dr. Cummings in Boston to try to get help fast, but he is at a meeting for three days. Raymond came yesterday, looking somber, and told me he had already spoken to Mary-Leigh and that he could no longer cut the grass. We have known for some time that he simply was not doing the work, and I’m sure this is the right decision for him. It is a nightmare to be always a little behind, to be badgered by everyone to get this or that done, and not have the strength—and the rainy spring is no help.

My hope is that he will still help me with the hedge clipping and gardening. He is a really expert gardener and when I first came here that seemed almost incredible luck. He has taught me a great deal in these two years, especially about clipping. I have learned by watching him, how thorough he is, what deep holes he digs when he plants a rosebush, for instance. I’m afraid it will be expensive to get the grass cut, but I can’t do it myself, or I would find time to do nothing else.

Anyway, despite all, I did a good piece of work yesterday on the portrait of Céline and feel much better about it. In looking up something I thought I could use in Florida Scott-Maxwell I came on this marvelous passage about mothers and children that applies equally to Céline and Rosalind (The Measure of My Days, pp. 16,17):

“A mother’s love for her children, even her inability to let them be, is because she is under a painful law that the life that passed through her must be brought to fruition. Even when she swallows it whole she is only acting like any frightened mother cat eating its young to keep it safe. It is not easy to give closeness and freedom, safety plus danger.

“No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. It could not be otherwise for she is impelled to know that the seeds of value sown in her have been winnowed. She never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer.”