June 1, 1994

Liebe Margrit,

Thank you for your letter. It was waiting for me in the mailbox when we came home from the office at about 7 o'clock.  I glanced at it then.  When I saw your signature on the legal document I felt very grateful to you for your trust in me and for making the legal aspect of our cooperation so simple and pleasant.

We encountered Klemens in the driveway.  He was just coming home from his hospital, and was preoccupied with a technical question about Medicare capitation payments for patients with end stage renal disease.  Since Laura was working and the children were at the Perlos', he and I went off to the Harvard Law School Library to try to find the answer. (We didn't have time; they were already on their summer schedule and closed at 9.)

When I got home I sat down with your letter, and although after an hour or so, I tried to get started on some investment computing, I really didn't get anything done, thinking about you and what you had said and what you were trying to say.  I slept lightly and woke about 5 o'clock, with the thoughts of you and the contents of your letter on my mind.  It is now 7:30 a.m.  Laura is working, Margaret has just gone to her Au Pair duties next door, and I want to try to answer your letter as best I can.  I am not sure whether my words will make things any better, but I want to try hard not to make things worse.

Most important, I think, is the acknowledgement of how deeply we care for, and how important we are, to each other.  I certainly am always aware, even in your bitterest recriminations, of your deep affection for me, and this letter will have accomplished its purpose, if it succeeds in reminding you of the reciprocity of those feelings.  My diagnosis: sibling rivalry, pure and simple.  I see us sixty years removed as Rebekah and Nathaniel, Rebekah stern-faced and determined, a mini-goddess damning Nathaniel with her outstretched arm: "Bad", she says in clipped, irrevocable syllables, "Bad Nathanl," and there he stands, bewildered as to the why or how, and mutely raises his fist in an obligatory salute to nominal enmity.  And then they resume playing.

You allude to Mutti's and Papa's mistakes.  We cannot raise them from the dead and make them do it over again in the right way.  You go back thirty-five years and indict me for my jealous guardianship of Klemens.  What can we do about that now?  What can we even know about it?  Is there no statute of limitations for my transgressions?  The past is inaccessible; the present is our challenge.  Here we can, and here we are obliged to act, and what we do does make a difference, for better or worse.

Before we can act creatively and constructively, we must have a realistic view of the stage.  It is important, I think, not to romanticize or idealize our family life in Belmont, but to understand that it consists of a network of adjustments and compromises, that each of the four grandparents, each of the two parents, and each of the three children have specific and often conflicting desires and needs, and that a certain level of harmony and efficiency is attained by the calculated accommodation to each others needs.  Laura's and my leaving each other the essential Lebensraum is an obvious example; but there are many others, if you need to be convinced.

So far as your own relationship to the children is concerned, it seems to me that this must necessarily develop in the emotional, social and geographic context of their present lives.  It is just as unrealistic to expect that you should associate with them outside of the social framework that their parents are struggling to create and to maintain, as that you should educate them in a remote geographic isolation such as Windsor or Toronto, or for that matter in Konnarock.

You know that we have had and continue to have a place for your in this family and in this house. In theory, you could come to live with us; you could watch Laura and Phyllis and Margaret take care of the children, and after a few weeks or months you could share their duties; and your involvement would be welcomed.  I admit that we are inordinately concerned about our children's physical well-being. They wear crash helmets before they get on the tricycle.  Outside the houses, we do not let them out of our sight, for fear they might be kidnapped.  Last year, when the Boston Herald wanted to print a picture of Nathaniel, Klemens withdrew Laura's consent, and anxiously and angrily threatened them with a lawsuit if they proceeded contrary to his wishes.  At Klemens urging, we took down part of the fence between the houses, so that the children could not be snatched from the sidewalk or rush into the street.  You may object to such cautions as being excessive but I believe them to be the parents' prerogative and I think that if you came to participate in the childrens upbringing you would have to respect them.

From what you have told me, I infer that you understand the invitation.  The fact that you choose deliberately not to accept it makes me neither angry nor sad, and - why not tell the truth, - just a little bit relieved.  In any case, while I am alive, and - as the lawyers say, - of sound mind, the invitation will not be withdrawn, whatever the consequences.  At the same time I understand that you have become accustomed to a very independent style of life and therefore it seems unlikely that you would be happy here; and so you blame me because the environment to which I invite you is not congenial, you blame me because of the sort of person I am, and then I hear Rebekah's stern voice "Bad Nathaniel!".

It seems to me that this unaccepted and fundamentally unacceptable invitation is a mirror image of the invitation which Papa once extended to me to move to Konnarock to help him with his practice in the Medical Center.  As you remember, during the entirety of his professional life in Konnarock he wished for and asked for help.  At one point, they considered importing Erwin Jahn to help him.  But when I came, in 1956, there was literally no place for me in the Medical Center and my suggestions about a modest remodelling to create such space were vigorously rebuffed.  So I ended up in Damascus.

My adult relationship with Papa lay in the shadow of his persistent reproaches for bad things that I had said; I can remember only two, there were probably more.  On one occasion I explained to him that I was not going to go to medical school to become a rich doctor with an empty head.  Although he was surely not rich, he mistakenly inferred that I was disparaging him as having an empty head.  On another occasion, I explained that I thought the vengeful punishment of criminals was inherently demeaning, and that I would not stoop so low as to advocate it.  And of these simple and inherently inoffensive statements he fashioned accusations which made me feel guilty literally for decades, for much of my adult life.  What I had said was not intended to hurt him, and was objectively innocuous, but he was hurt because he felt weak and inferior and his blame of me was like a crutch with which he supported his self-respect.  To the extent however, that it was I who made him feel inferior, his complaints were justified, albeit on a very profound, quasi-mystical level, and so are yours.

From the oppressiveness of my personality you have found refuge among your friends, of whom you count a large number.  In this respect also I am impressed by the difference between us, for, as you know, I have no friends other than yourself, Margaret, Klemens, and perhaps transiently, Benjamin.  Everyone else dislikes me, or at minimum is made uncomfortable by me.  My patients' apparent affection for me is entirely a reflection of their need for help.  As soon as this need disappears, or is met by other physicians, little is left other than boredom or resentment.  Alex, Peter and Janet, for each of whom I have always liked very much, literally make circles to avoid any encounter.  Alex and Winnie, who have come to Boston dozens of times, never stop to see us.  Peter and Letty have just invited Klemens and his family to visit them in Pocono on the way back from Konnarock.  Klemens, in retrospect unwisely, solicited an invitation for Margaret and myself as well, which was denied.  So you see, it is not Laura, but I who am the real Jew in the family; I remember in our childhood, the grey family Ford stopping in front of the houses of various relatives and acquaitances, and Mutti going in alone to me sure that Papa was not unerwünscht.  In Boston, ethnically conscious drivers have bumper stickers: "Proud to be Italian." My bumper sticker says "Proud to be Unerwünscht." Even Helmut Frielinghaus, notwithstanding his familiarity with eccentric individuals, was much more comfortable, I thought, talking to you than to me.  I haven't heard anything more from him since you drove him to Tri-Cities, and I wonder whether or not I ever will.

I recite all this as explanation for your need for a far more extended family, your friends, and the difficulty inherent in reconciling our respective social needs.  The fact is that if they knew me, very few, if any, of your friends would want be my friends, and very few if any members of your extended family would want to be members of my family.  It is not surprising that for you there should arise, at least potentially, a conflict of loyalties.  I mention this not as an immediate practical, but at this juncture, as a very important symbolic issue.  Questions that arise in my mind: Can you expect Billy to marry a woman and establish a family who will take you in and care for you when you are no longer able to care for your self?  Will anyone in Hannah's family, presumably she herself is too young, look after you in your old age?  Would any of your other friends?  Would anyone other than myself and Margaret and Klemens?  

From October 1955, when Papa became ill over C. Ross Ritchie's allegation of fraud, until January 9, 1990, when Mutti died, for thirty four years and three months, I devoted myself to looking after Mutti and Papa.  In 1955, I bargained with Dr. Kirsch and his ecclesiastical buddies for a contract, which would secure for Mutti and Papa the right to the Medical Center and the house for the rest of their lives, and which would clear Papa's name of the charges of fraud, that Ritchie had insinuated.  This contract effectively made possible the last 20 years, or fifty-seven percent of Papa's practice time in Konnarock.  That a contract was necessary became inescapable three or four years later when the church tried to renege on its promises.  We sued, and won.  But for my contract, the house and the Medical Center would have gone to the Waters in 1958, and Mutti and Papa would have had to pay them rent, if indeed they had not been evicted.  One cannot calculate the emotional cost of survival, if they had survived at all, but one can add up the value of the rent Mutti and Papa might have had to pay from 1958 to the time of their deaths.

And then there was the nursing care that I obtained for them.  You yourself were witness to their last years, and your professional experience must give you some idea how much it would have cost to obtain care of equivalent quality commercially.  I broached this issue in our last conversation in Konnarock.  Later I made a computer model of the financial value of my contributions to Mutti and Papa's estate.  The bottom line, of course, depends on how high one estimates the rent which the Waters might have charged.  and how much one thinks one would have had to pay for nursing home care equivalent to that which they received.  I am convinced that had I not helped them as I did, they would have died leaving a far smaller estate or none at all.

I mention this in the context of your own estate plans, not that I would wish to deprive Billy and Hannah of the benefits of your generosity, but because those plans may reflect a misunderstanding.  In principle, I am not unprepared to consider Billy and Hannah members of my family even now, and I am willing to consider distributing a portion of the family's assets to them during your lifetime.  In fact, if they deserve to receive your estate after your death, their needs deserve to be considered while you are yet alive, and monies should be made available for them at such time as the funds will benefit them most, and not haphazardly as a felicitous by-product of your premature death.  My inference, however, is that they have no actual need of the funds now, and that the usefulness to them of funds at some future time is hypothetical, and that your assignment to them of the survivor benefits of your annuity is primarily a symbolic act on your part, a declaration of independence from Mutti and Papa and from me, an act of defiance perhaps, which has begun to trouble you already.  And it should.

I very much hope that you will live happily and healthily past the minimum term of you annuity, and not because I begrudge Hannah and Billy the windfall, but because when you die I will miss you.  If you survive that minimum number of years, your assignment to Billy and Hannah of the annuity survivorship will have served merely as a symbolic, and I think not altogether felicitous, apportionment of your sympathies and loyalties.  Realistically however, there is a statistical possibility that, before the minimum term of your annuity expires, you will become ill, and that for some months or years you will require the kind of care which Mutti and Papa required, and that much of Margarets and my energies and all of the money in your trust will be applied, as the trust says, "for your comfort and convenience." Billy and Hannah will probably not be there to help.  Nor will any members of their families.  Then you will die.  A substantial portion of my life's investment will have been spent for you, but all of your assets will go elsewhere.  "Cast your bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." The wisdom of the Preacher has not been lost on me, and I can contemplate such a course of events with equanimity.  But you, I should think, would feel better, if instead of relying on Hannah's grandfather's unwritten assurances, - as Mutti and Papa relied on the unwritten promises of the Board, - you made the funds payable to Klemens or myself as executor of your estate, and defined in a written instrument the manner, consistent with your obligations to all of us, in which you wanted it distributed after your death.

You will agree that this is enough of a letter for today.