May 22nd club. June 2nd

We took part in Gavin's funeral today by webcam.It was a comforting experience a beautiful tribute to Gavin.John and I then went into Alicante and walked along the beach and watched the sun coming up over the sea.We came home for breakfast and had a long sleep.

I wakened up feeling much better with a huge sense of gratitude for my 43 year long friendship with Gavin.

I chose to read the introduction to A Gift from the Sea"

( I felt I got a gift from the sea this morning, hope returning)

Introduction.
I began these pages for myself,in order to think out my own particular pattern of living,my own individual balance of life,work and human relationships. And since I think better with pencil in hand,i started naturally to write.
I had the feeling,when the thoughts first clarified on paper,that my experience was very different from other people's. (Are we all under this illusion?) My situation had,in certain ways, more freedom than that of most people,and in certain other ways,much less.
Besides,I thought,not all woman are searching for a new pattern of living,or want a contemplative corner of their own. Many woman are content with their lives as they are.They manage amazingly well,far better that I,it seemed to me,looking at hheir lives from the outside.With envy and admiration, I observed the porcelain perfection of their smoothly ticking days.Perhaps they had no problems,or had found the answers long ago.No I decided,these discussions would have value and interest only for myself.
But as I went on writing and simultaneously talking with other woman,young and old with different lives and experience--those who supported themselves,those who wished careers,those who were hard-working housewives and mothers,and those with more ease--
I found that my point of view was not unique. In varying settings and under different forms,I discovered that many woman and men,too, were grappling with essentially the same questions as I,and were hungry to discuss and argue and hammer out possible answers.Even those whose lives had appeared to be ticking imperturbably under their smiling clock-faces were often trying,like me,to evolve another rhythm with more creative pauses in it,more adjustment to their individual needs,and new and more alive relationships to themselves as well as others.
And so gradually,these chapters,fed by conversations,arguements and revelations from men and woman of all groups, became more than my individual story,until I decided in the end to give them back to the people who shared and stimulated many of these thoughts. here ,then,with my warm feelings of gratitude and companionship for those working along the same lines,I return my gift from the sea.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh.


John chose Shakespeare ,he also had a sense of the cloud being lifted,and he chose ,a favourite of mine, because it is mentioned in Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

Let me not to the marriage of true minds



Admit impediments. Love is not love



Which alters when it alteration finds,



Or bends with the remover to remove:



O no! it is an ever-fixed mark



That looks on tempests and is never shaken;



It is the star to every wandering bark,



Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.



Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks



Within his bending sickle's compass come:



Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,



But bears it out even to the edge of doom.



If this be error and upon me proved,



I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 116 W.S.