Grover’s Mill – 7 Sept 80
A week since our wedding so this must be our honeymoon. I feel perfectly balanced on a tightrope hung between 2 poles – drinking vodka & lime while studying V. Woolf’s Books & Portraits, Sayers’ Mind of the Maker. T. struggling with additions to a pile of thank you notes. Tomorrow off to Guilders’ College for a “teachers organizational meeting” so they must be sufficiently desperate they don’t mind my lack of a degree. Should be interesting. Chaotic summer swallowed up by wedding – ended up costing $7000 total. Facing winter with confidence – pregnant in 2 months! If Guilders doesn’t work out enroll in Marymount get my degree 1 class at a time. Last night we had bridesmaid Trish Lambert to dinner – husb Noah coming to lunch today – their marriage breaking up so we counsel. Looks hopeless – Noah chooses his pride over Trish every time – she says she’s not going back to a situation where she was so physically ill. What was she allergic to all the doctors wanted to know? Turned out to be him. Try to write here more regularly. These pages are a bank acct. Save, save save. Mon Sept 8 – 80 – Train from NYC – 4 pm What I thought would be a “teachers meeting” turns into a disgusting “registration” process – running from one building to another, paying fees, filling out forms – I am seriously allergic to bureaucracy and the tears are starting to leak. Feel like a person wearing an ill-fitting disguise. However I believe I carried it off. Just act like you’re entitled and no one questions you. I just don’t want to live in this world. I doubt poor T caught in the maw of Beginning Law can provide much sympathy. He is dotting I’s and crossing t’s with a vengeance. Financial pressures create time pressures. Try to look for the meaning in all this. 2:30 AM Sept 9– Worry and 2 double whiskies wake me at one and I can’t get back to sleep. Tried bath & reading, nada. Toss has been magnificent. I was able to present my worries without sounding like an idiot and he was able to identify with them without being dismissive. He says his uncle Avery gives Masters to people without BAs in Environmental Studies all the time. I say I really don’t need the degree it’s the experience I want and blame Plumly. And Chevenix. They ruined me for “degrees”. He always says Plumly was “not so bad” – and of course he loved Reed but they wouldn’t even let him see his grades! (They show everyone else) – but he seems to accept my Kafkaesque emotions. Sat 20 Sept 80– Fortunately our weekend guest (T’s Reed roommate) not here yet. Cleaned & garnished house for 4 solid hours. Went shopping bought 14 meals for $60 – T went to Trenton then discovered he didn’t need to go. (Getting out of housework? Hmmm.) Put a bookcase together and filled it with books (which helped) now he’s making peach butter. How point out to him that him doing all the work he LIKES and me doing all the work BOTH OF US DISLIKE is not a fair division of labor? Cowardice. Then there’s the problem that this is his grandparents place filled with his grandparents furniture and he doesn’t want anything “changed.” My only satisfaction if making my study a feminine as possible ( painting my file cabinets yellow.) Reading Krumm’s Why I am an Episcopalian (he’s pro women’s ministry and Hans Kung’s Signposts for the Future and struggling with what God I believe in. Not a subject for dinner party conversation. He will watch Presidential debate and I can opt out of that.
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StormFall - 4 Aug 80
Familiar feeling of depression. More wedding invitations – Granma’s list and Sutton’s list. Poor Sutton – I feel so sorry for him even though he jokes about missing Val: “I got rid of the last gardener I had.” The only bad night was Ghislaine’s party – Mom and Dad chose a reel of slides and I sat there stunned at the genesis of all my stories. Ocean, lake, dolls cottage – happy healthy smiling people – whence comes all this pain? Dad looks at pictures of the Gryphon tooling through Europe and says, “I’d do it all again.” Would he? I wouldn’t! That pain comes from somewhere deep, deep inside me. Makes me feel like they’ve been right all along – there’s something wrong with ME. Luckily T backs me up – he says he “feels 13 yrs old” around them. Fortunately I had one “flying high” day on Shadowe – with Gretchen Fuchs, the poet. Oh, her library! We soared together in a conversational ecstasy. I saw us deep in the future, two old ladies in an Eng garden. Lovely woman. Champagne & steamers with Sutton – then home. Grover’s Mill – 10 Aug 80 Unpleasant shock in the mail today – Guilders demanding transcripts. Naïve me – I thought only the writing sample mattered for the writing program! Wait till they cock a snook at my record! Will I be exposed as an unqualified adventuress? Would it be so bad if they withdrew their offer Then I could go someplace else – Marymount maybe. How I long to be pregnant! StormFall – Tues 19 Aug 80 My last entry? I absent myself from family discussions saying I’ll go to bed to read – really want to write here. Just taken my last BC pill maybe EVER – only 13 pills into the packet. Feeling amorphous. Borderless. The aspirations of adolescence fading. What were the aspirations of adolescence? I can barely remember. To be admired, chiefly. By “others”. And now I’ve ditched the “others” and I’m alone on a vast plain – trying to steady a tipping world. Listening. Are inner imperatives enough for a whole self? What about love. But love is a term like “weather” – describes infinite mutability. Need to finish the goddam wedding maps & walk them to PO. 2:15 PM – Thurs 21 Aug 80 Period started! Shouldn’t be surprised – been having a brief period in the middle of my cycle since I started these damned pills – probably making me sick. Thinking about the relationships between parents & children – how avoid the miseries? Poor Mom! She always felt she’d “lose”. Dangerous not believing in an “eternal force” because then all there is is YOU. To BLAME. Poor Mom! Preferred to housekeep alone – but wanted us to “help” when she wasn’t there – “her way.” Fated to disappointment! Wedding programs – copy the service in a book for T’s friend Brackett – the gay Baptist preacher – to use. Weirdly dark cold day. Shakespeare play at Edith Wharton’s tonight is open air – I just hope it doesn’t rain! Tom’s out driving around with Cousin Wolf in the ancient Chevy II they resurrected. Studying the Marymount catalogue and reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet– hadn’t realized he was so young when he wrote them! Should be called Letters FROM a Young Poet! May have to switch to Christie – sugar taken for “shock”. |
Alysse Aallyn
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