Monday, January 12th

I WOKE to gray light, howling wind … a real blizzard. I have never before seen snow as high as the bushes on the terrace and the terrace wall. About eight inches on top of what was already there, frozen solid. It’s still bitterly cold, and the hot water tank is not working, I discovered.

After I shoveled a path out to the turnaround and also down to the bird feeders, I went back to bed with my breakfast and had a long think. In Nelson I never experienced quite the same stir-crazy feeling I get here when I can’t get out … and that is because I was on a road there, could see Mildred’s light, and knew that by eleven Win French would be along with the mail. There is no one who comes regularly to this house except the Withrows, every two weeks, to clean. So now and then I get into a sweating panic about having an accident, and not being found for days.

I am self-reliant when it comes to the inner world. I do not need a friend around most of the time, but I am not so self-reliant physically. Any very great physical effort may risk a heart attack and it is not foolish, I guess, to be afraid.

Anyway, it’s a miracle that Lee came and went in good weather … though she met the blizzard at La Guardia. I admired her courage, as walking is still very difficult for her, and stairs agonizing pain when she bends the artificial kneecap. She is thinking about the house we saw. It’s a very big step to consider—almost as dangerous as marriage; for what if one did not really like a house after buying? I tried to put no pressure, but I shall be sad if she decides against it.

Luckily that night (for it had been a grueling day for Lee) I could open out the big sofa in the library, so she didn’t have to go upstairs at all while she was here, and went to sleep with the firelight. We had a good cozy time, the first time I have seen her since Labor Day, when a woman on a ferry backed into her car and smashed up her knee. She has been in a cast for months.

It’s a strange sight to look down the field now and get the illusion that it is breaking up … as big waves crash in white foam against the white snow. It’s still snowing hard, so it will be some time before the ploughs come, and Dixon opens the frozen garage door to set me free.