Monday, May 10th

A GENTLE HAZE over the pale blue sea … the field below it looks very green, the birds sound lazy, and it will be a warm May day.

I want to savor Anne Thorp’s presence here yesterday. It was such a blessed time, so full of light and the love that goes back so many many years and encompasses my mother and father, as well as hers. Like Judy, she lives almost wholly in the moment, but how rich a moment it is for her! She seemed to see each flower with the eyes of the newborn. We walked down to the ocean, and later, lying on the terrace in the chaise longue she closed her eyes and listened to its gentle roar against the rocks. And while we ate our lunch she forgot food entirely in the enjoyment of the squirrels and little birds at the feeders, in the flowering cherry (its buds all pink now) just outside. Of course, none of this would be possible without Agnes Swift and her care and sensitivity to every possible need. She is the shepherd of a dear old sheep who becomes more and more lamblike now every day.

I always think of Anne, tall and slender, playing tennis at the Longfellow house and dancing folk dances there each May Day, and it is invraisemblable to witness now the awkwardness, the difficulty with which she walks, the stooped shoulders. But she doesn’t see this change, for she lives in the eternal NOW of very old age. Her blue eyes seem more transparent than ever, and fill just as they used to with a kind of radiance whenever she is moved by anything deeply. It is not tears, but an added light and that is what has always been so extraordinary about her. None of her sisters had those eyes. I have never seen them in anyone else.

Spring is always poignant because nothing stays. It must be caught and appreciated on the wing, for soon it will be gone. And with so many many of my friends now in their eighties it is more poignant than usual for me this year.