Monday, December 22nd

WE ARE in the middle of the worst storm I have seen in my three years here … the seas a rocking dark gray undulation that shatters in breaking waves, high wind, and about seventeen inches of snow. It let up a little yesterday for a while; now it is sleeting. Shoveling, which was easy yesterday with twelve inches of light snow, has now become hard work, as it is wet and heavy with a frozen inch on top. Poor Tamas! His legs are too short and even though I make a path out to the garage, he does not use it for the intended purpose! Perhaps today we shall be ploughed out and I can get the mail and also take him for a walk. I had to put off fetching Judy till tomorrow.

Last night I decked the tree alone, a big fire in the fireplace, and it was lovely and quiet, doing it slowly … it’s the first time in thirty years, I suppose, that I have done it without Judy … this time she will find it lit and shining when we get in tomorrow afternoon.

Very lucky that I set out on my Santa Claus expedition last Thursday to deliver cookies and presents in Peterborough and Nelson, to Brattleboro to see Marynia, and finally Wellesley.

Marynia, sitting in a wheelchair in the sun porch at the Eaton Park home, looked me straight in the eyes for the half hour I was there, and recognized me at once when I arrived. But she is not really there anymore, stroked my sleeve compulsively the whole time, as though I were a cat or dog. In the wheelchair beside her a very old lady wept. It was excruciating to witness this unassuageable grief, and I finally fled. How much stamina and grace of heart it takes for the nurses who see all this every day, knowing that none of these patients can get well, only worse day by day, for their illness is old age!

So it was a particular blessing to be with Eleanor Blair, where I spent the night in her cozy nest in Wellesley, the house full of plants and flowers and books, and her interests as wide as ever, and the same with Marguerite and Keats. I have to remember that senility is not always a threat to the old. Old age can be magnificent.