December 10, 2005

Dear Jane,

Thank you for your letter, and for your willingness to be my grandmother.  I can be your grandfather if you want me.  My four grandchildren won't be jealous, and as you well know, at our age, the more grandchildren one has, the happier one is.

I don't know what it was that brought to mind Wordsworth's poem about the rainbow:


     MY heart leaps up when I behold  
       A rainbow in the sky:  
     So was it when my life began,  
       So is it now I am a man,  
     So be it when I shall grow old   
         Or let me die!  
     The child is father of the man:  
     And I could wish my days to be  
     Bound each to each by natural piety.  


You understand about rainbows: you don't see them then the sun is directly overhead; and you don't see them on cloudless days.  They appear unexpectedly when the rain that falls from heaven is illuminated by the setting sun.  One must seize the moment to declare them; the next moment they are gone, and the passenger next to me (Margaret, of course), asks incredulously: Rainbow? What did you say? Rainbow.  I don't see any Rainbow.  To which I can only reply, It's too late now.  The rainbow is gone, unavoidably, because the sun has drawn back behind the clouds.

You will have a hard time believing this, but it's true: There was a rainbow and it spanned the Berkshires. One limb I thought was rooted somewhere on Bristol Road in Canaan; the other touched down in Amherst, and the apparition seemed to span my life. Like all true rainbows, it was only fleeting and has long since disappeared, but I am confident that when the atmospherics are right it will reappear.

To come down to earth, literally and figuratively, the issue of when or even whether we should get together again, is largely a matter of inclination and convenience, Morty's and yours, rather than Margaret's and mine.  Margaret is (almost) infinitely adaptable (how else could she have survived?), and I exist in a world of fantasy, of dreams and of nightmares, where time is not measurable by clock or calendar.

So far as I am concerned, if we come to Amherst, a short visit is preferable to a long one, Why?  One runs out of things that are fit to discuss and one starts talking about what should be left unsaid.  If you visit us, because our embarrassingly large house in fact has some characteristics of a hotel, we can invite you and Morty to stay in your own room(s) overnight for as many nights as you like, which would make sense if you had other things to do in Boston.

Some day next summer, I hope to take a walk down Bristol Road from the farm to the store, as we did in 1939.  I would like it, if you and Lizzy could come along.

As I sort through old correspondence, I occasionally come across one of the postcards that I slipped into the blue books with the college final examination, asking the instructor to let me know my grade.  I haven't changed. Each letter to you is like a final, and, in lieu of a postcard, I enclose a copy on which I ask that you write my grade (I hope I pass) as well as any comments or corrections you consider appropriate.  Then, when you think it's time for another letter, please mail the graded copy of the preceding one back to me.

Eccentricity makes life interesting and bearable.

Jochen