enormous as to leave me with nothing but the mystery of being human.
The notebook said:
Chip, of course, almost destroyed us all when he took off with a young woman I had hired to copy these books, to get them ready, I thought, to show to a publisher, at least the sections about animals. She came into the house with her perfect carriage, her gray eyes, her smoldering quality that would have scared anyone with half a brain or anyone who knew just how powerful such a quality is. It has started wars. Destroyed empires. It is a flaw, it seems, in the godhead, in what makes things continue, since the attraction is so strong that it will strike anything that dares get in the way. A trial of gods and men was needed to atone for the crimes of the house of Atreus. Well, I donât want to overstate the case, but it is a miracle no one was killed when Chip, already engaged, ran off with a young woman in a way that had the air of erotic disaster so strong that most people recoil in horror, not from the obvious attraction, but from their own inability to entertain such a feeling. Or to act on it. This inability made them feel reduced, just human, rather than those fleeting moments of being in love when one feels like half a god.
Of course, Pop negotiated, but fell in love with Jean Cooper too, although I think she let him have it in a way that suits an old fool. Chip was properly chastised. He married as he should, although to show the power we are speaking of, the farm was burned to the ground and had to be rebuilt.
Still, during the time when Chip was with Jean Cooper, he knew I was sympathetic, and I was, but not for any reason that Chip could have guessed. As his mother, I was concerned for him, didnât want him hurt, especially after those years I had spent worrying when he had been in a camp in Poland and Germany for prisoners of war. No. I surely didnât want to lose him to that erotic haze, and the trouble it can cause, violence and death. And, as I said, we came close. About as close as you can come.
But there was this other matter of my own, too, that had taken place some years before and which made me empathetic, as though Chip and I were charged elements, atomic particles that vibrated at the same frequency. In those days, women were quiet about the things that happened to them, or that they did, at least if they were American.
Pop and I had an apartment on Park Avenue, with, since Pop loved South America so much, a genuine Argentinian garden, with a false skylight. And, of course, we had the land on the Delaware River. Pop was a customs lawyer and spent a lot of time in Buenos Ares, Rio, Santiago, Lima, and other places. When he traveled, in those days mostly by ship and train, I preferred to live at the farm where I could wait to see a hawk, a deer, a bear, a snake, a grouse, and to write something about them, if only to understand what was happening to me, to my husband, and to my boys. This, of course, was before the war, but not much, when the boys were at Saint Paulâs School.
When Pop had arranged to represent a meat-packing company in Argentina, a furrier in Patagonia, a mine in Bolivia, and was going to see them one after another, that is, he would be gone for some time, we started the barn I had planned for the lambs I wanted to keep. This was one of the buildings to burn when Chip began to flirt with those old attractions,more than just sex or love, but that passion that mostly just scares people.
I should have known that a woman in her late thirties was flirting with danger, as definite as a tiger in the jungle. And the man had no sense, no sense at all. He thought that he could just sleep with me, just like that.
When I read this in the notebook, the dust settled around me in the attic, each small bit like a moment, a sparkling instant of time long gone. Then my grandmother breaks away for a moment from this man, whoever he was, and speculated about pain. She described emotional pain as
The notebook said:
Chip, of course, almost destroyed us all when he took off with a young woman I had hired to copy these books, to get them ready, I thought, to show to a publisher, at least the sections about animals. She came into the house with her perfect carriage, her gray eyes, her smoldering quality that would have scared anyone with half a brain or anyone who knew just how powerful such a quality is. It has started wars. Destroyed empires. It is a flaw, it seems, in the godhead, in what makes things continue, since the attraction is so strong that it will strike anything that dares get in the way. A trial of gods and men was needed to atone for the crimes of the house of Atreus. Well, I donât want to overstate the case, but it is a miracle no one was killed when Chip, already engaged, ran off with a young woman in a way that had the air of erotic disaster so strong that most people recoil in horror, not from the obvious attraction, but from their own inability to entertain such a feeling. Or to act on it. This inability made them feel reduced, just human, rather than those fleeting moments of being in love when one feels like half a god.
Of course, Pop negotiated, but fell in love with Jean Cooper too, although I think she let him have it in a way that suits an old fool. Chip was properly chastised. He married as he should, although to show the power we are speaking of, the farm was burned to the ground and had to be rebuilt.
Still, during the time when Chip was with Jean Cooper, he knew I was sympathetic, and I was, but not for any reason that Chip could have guessed. As his mother, I was concerned for him, didnât want him hurt, especially after those years I had spent worrying when he had been in a camp in Poland and Germany for prisoners of war. No. I surely didnât want to lose him to that erotic haze, and the trouble it can cause, violence and death. And, as I said, we came close. About as close as you can come.
But there was this other matter of my own, too, that had taken place some years before and which made me empathetic, as though Chip and I were charged elements, atomic particles that vibrated at the same frequency. In those days, women were quiet about the things that happened to them, or that they did, at least if they were American.
Pop and I had an apartment on Park Avenue, with, since Pop loved South America so much, a genuine Argentinian garden, with a false skylight. And, of course, we had the land on the Delaware River. Pop was a customs lawyer and spent a lot of time in Buenos Ares, Rio, Santiago, Lima, and other places. When he traveled, in those days mostly by ship and train, I preferred to live at the farm where I could wait to see a hawk, a deer, a bear, a snake, a grouse, and to write something about them, if only to understand what was happening to me, to my husband, and to my boys. This, of course, was before the war, but not much, when the boys were at Saint Paulâs School.
When Pop had arranged to represent a meat-packing company in Argentina, a furrier in Patagonia, a mine in Bolivia, and was going to see them one after another, that is, he would be gone for some time, we started the barn I had planned for the lambs I wanted to keep. This was one of the buildings to burn when Chip began to flirt with those old attractions,more than just sex or love, but that passion that mostly just scares people.
I should have known that a woman in her late thirties was flirting with danger, as definite as a tiger in the jungle. And the man had no sense, no sense at all. He thought that he could just sleep with me, just like that.
When I read this in the notebook, the dust settled around me in the attic, each small bit like a moment, a sparkling instant of time long gone. Then my grandmother breaks away for a moment from this man, whoever he was, and speculated about pain. She described emotional pain as
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