Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letters.

Every day, I have thought about you and your recovery
from your eye operation, and I was under the impression
that I had started at various times to write a letter.
But when I review my computer files for the past several days,
I find nothing that looks like a draft, so that the incipient
communication must have remained all in my head, - 
which is probably just as well.

Throughout the years that I was doing intra-ocular surgery,
it seemed unavoidable that I should in some degree participate
in the emotional experiences of my patients. Understandably
they all anticipated the operation with anxiety, which I
considered healthy; then, post-surgery, their immediate
response was exhilaration, relief that their eyes, and they
themselves, had survived. Sooner or later that euphoria gave
way to sadness and sometimes depression, when it became
obvious that life had not been transformed, and that its
perplexities and problems remained unresolved.

Your decision not to have the second eye operated on at
this time is a relief to me. As for the operated eye,
my advice, - unasked for -, is that you not worry about
the acuity unless it is noticeably poor, and that you
not fret about glasses if you are able to drive and read
with reasonable comfort. - But here I go again, practicing
ophthalmology without an Ohio license.

Perhaps more pertinent, I thank you for letting me read
Joanna's essay. The light touch of her thought, irony
as the only ultimately valid and honest response to the
constraints and insults of society, have become quite
congenial to me, although at her age, I was intellectually
too clumsy to be capable of such writing. I hope she is
admitted to the college of her choice.

You asked about my second computer. Actually it's not the
second, but the sixth. One on Nantucket for the surveillance,
one downstairs for the occasional patient, the one on which 
I am composing this letter, on a separate table an old machine
with an attached dot-matrix printer that is programmed for
printing Medicare forms, an old laptop, hand-me-down from
Klemens, which is presently stashed away in a closet. The
latest machine which I have just assembled, I plan to take
to Konnarock when Margaret and I drive there in a month or two.
I am setting it up as a surveillance machine just like the one
on Nantucket.

You asked, how I can tell from the Nantucket images that
the house is in fact undisturbed. On the outside, it's
the absence of tracks on the ground and the integrity of 
the windows and doors. On the inside the pictures tell 
me whether chairs, duffel bags or pails have been moved. 
Which reminds me that I haven't checked on Nantucket today. 
I'll send this letter first. Maybe write more later. 
I seem to have more on my mind.

Stay well and give my best to Ned.

Jochen