Read Online After the Stroke by May Sarton - Free Book Online

ago in Paris! What a bond to be with someone who remembered it and Printemps’ aria:
    Si tu m’écris
    Dis-moi toujours que tu t’ennuies
    horriblement
    Mozart sang it in farewell to three court ladies, each of whom might have been his mistress. But which one? That was the piquancy of the scene.
    Pat is dear to me partly because the frame of reference between us is very wide. She has read enormously—and there is the theater, too—and Jung—and all that a European woman has in her blood.

Thursday, July 3
    It’s still gray, cold and miserable after yesterday’s deluge and I feel tired and cross—bored by this half-life, and not quite ready, perhaps, for a full one.
    Pierrot is proving to be a problem—using my bathroom mat at night although he has a pan in my bedroom close by So I again threw the bath mat in the washer—and we shall see. This time I forced him to smell it and spanked him. Meanwhile Tamas, who is always so good, had had diarrhea in the night and there were three rugs to clean up downstairs!
    But I’m determined to get something done at my desk, for morale’s sake.

Friday, July 4
    Statue of Liberty day! It has been quite a celebration and I feel proud this time of the media who really made an effort to talk about the hell Ellis Island was. We, my mother and I, came that way and she would never talk about it, she had been so terribly humiliated. The miracle is that the great waves of “foreigners”—Irish, Italians, Greeks, Jews—really have been assimilated. I must say, too, that in spite of my nostalgia for Europe I am glad to be an American. Among other good things, to write in English. But for World War I, I should have been a Belgian poet in a tiny country divided between two languages.
    It’s been a lovely quiet day; the only sound, the sea gulls crying and the murmur of ocean. I felt rather sick after lunch—dreading the return of that awful feeling from the drug, but maybe it will grow less—and maybe Dr. Petrovich will reduce the dose to one every other day. I think I can handle that.
    I’m really getting ready for the fall trips—hoping against hope I shall be able to do them. Rather dismayed to find how far Burlington, Vermont, is—where I’m due September twenty-fourth for a reading. I had imagined Edythe might drive me there. But it looks as though I would have to take a plane from Boston.
    Pierrot has been very affectionate all day and last night behaved himself, thank goodness. The great adventure was going for a walk. He bounds or rather tears after or ahead of us, then gets frightened and wails until I call him. When a motorcar passed us very slowly he was terrified and disappeared entirely. I called and called, heard no mews—and was quite anxious, but there he was waiting for us when we got home, Tamas and I.
    I found a tick under my knee. They have been the worst ever this year, but had seemed to be over lately. How repulsive they are!

Saturday, July 5
    An in and out day—but there’s no doubt that having to pull oneself together is a help. Heidi had agreed to meet me at Barnacle Billy’s for lunch, so I had an incentive to get things done and did a laundry, swept the kitchen, took rubbish down cellar (luckily Raymond was here when I got back from lunch so it was all ready for him to take).

Sunday, July 6
    Horbible muggy gray day. I got up full of determination at five-thirty, let Tamas out, made bacon for Sunday breakfast for Tamas and me. Pierrot was out bird watching. After breakfast, put fresh sheets on my bed and washed and folded the dirty ones—and meanwhile had decided to make ratatouille before the ingredients Edythe got for me rotted. It took nearly an hour to cut everything up and get it started—so I can finish the cooking tonight now the work is done. All very well, but now it is nine forty-five and I am thinking of taking a nap instead of writing