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Norman got me the job at Heritage, and I met Mike at Heritage, and Mike met Norman at Heritage - - little wheels within wheels.) Norman and his wife and children (I've seen their pictures -- beguiling, pretty children!) come to visit in Woodbury, just ten miles down the road, where her family have a house. But we've never seen them Here. She's a funny one, I've decided. But Norman is a love... Oh, and he told a dear story about one of their visits to the country, when he and his son went into the grandparent's yard to cut the grass and Norman needed something or other in the cellar -- opened the outside cellar hatchway, and as he and the little boy went down the steps, the child said, "Are we going to the subway, Daddy?". Norman, a country boy himself, was shocked. "What am I doing to my child? He doesn't know what a cellar door is?"

We are back in Washington, Ct., as you can gather, in the same old beloved house (that I can be so tedious about) and are really happy to be away from New York. And it's lovely being married again. Better for me that being single. I like being married, when all is said and done. And Mike is a country person too -- he likes to saw wood and will be out at dawn to shovel the snow and is a first-rate field ornithologist (out at dawn to stand in a swamp and watch for incoming flights of obscure migrants). And he never forgets a birthday, which is new to me. Also, did I tell you, he's a fine guitarist -- blues-- and the first to admit that a lot of his material is lifted whole from Josh White, but it's a delight. And we really do go to square dance parties -- and the fiddler really is a farm boy I knew when I was sixteen. And we sing in the annual Messiah concert at the Congregational Church, and Mike is in charge of grinding glass for the local re-cycling project. And there you are. The snug-as-a-bug syndrome. This may well be the reason I'm not writing fiction. I'm not angry about anything. Or distressed. Or feeling put upon. I'm happy to let the old days ramble by. And that's death to urgency, and The Message. I make a few immediate notes in my journal, then shrug and smile, and let it go. Both my novels were written in solitary, so to speak.