Dear Alex,

Thank you for your e-mail. I didn't see it last evening because I went
to bed very early. I discovered it at 3:45 a.m. when my CD player turned
itself on to play Cantata 206, awakening me so that I could take Klemens
to Logan for his early morning flight to Minneapolis to tend to my cousin
Marion who is on the threshold of another cycle of crises as she leaves 
the nursing home to move into an "assisted living" facility.

I thought about your letter on the way to the airport and back. I remembered
a letter of Margaret's in which she wrote me three months into our courtship 
on August 25, 1949: 

"My first reaction to your letter was one of annoyance and irritation. 
Now do not leap to the conclusion that I misunderstood. In the first 
place when I am away from you my feelings about you and my estimation 
of you are apt to be more critical than when I am with you. The 
pedagogical impulse (or whatever it is) swims up to the surface...."

"The gist of my irritation seems to be that you make such difficulties 
over everything - what should be simple, as well as what is really 
very hard...."

"Often you seem to argue for the sake of arguing, simply to contradict 
and to shove your opponent to the brink of some exasperated absurdity 
or overstatement...."

confirming the wisdom of Solomon: Ecclesiastes 1:9, “The thing that hath been, 
it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: 
and there is no new thing under the sun.”

I loved Margaret for the person she was; and I love you for the person you
are. Nothing more needs to be said.

Jochen