December 1976

Dear Ms.

After working full time and attending ten hours of evening classes each week, I can’t begin to describe the rage I feel when performing 100 percent of the household duties – not to mention being zoo-keeper for an overly energetic Great Dane and a cat – while my husband leisurely reads.

Because numerous discussions on this matter have not changed the situation, I am continually searching for new tactics to help him see the folly of his ways.

My darling Jane:

When you read this I want you to do it with an open heart. Forget the things that have been said – the thoughts you may have had, and try to remember only the better, more beautiful phase of life. When I am not there with you, it is going to be your task to try to help the little ones to see things. Try to guide them in the right away. This is your work and your duty.

To me motherhood has been the most beautiful thing in my life. The wonder of it never ceases for me – to see you all developing from tiny helpless babies into big strong girls and boys, to see your minds changing with your years and to remember that some day you will be grown men and women. It is overwhelming.

All my life as a child I looked forward to the time when I would have children of my own – and in spite of my so-called talents or urges toward other things, underneath was that spark which had to burst into flame sometime. And when I held you, Jane – my first baby in my arms, I had the greatest thrill I have ever experienced. I felt almost saintly, as if I had really entered heaven, and now I know that every time a mother receives a new baby she really does enter heaven. There is nothing else in life like it. And anyone who receives such a blessing should be eternally grateful.

I am telling you this, Jane, just so you will understand my love and feeling for you. Always remember this and as you grow older, think of me sometime and try to understand what I am trying to convey to you.

My heart is full, but I could not write the things I feel in a thousand years. Love each other and be good to daddy and he will take care of you. This is the hardest, bitterest moment of my life, leaving you. but I cannot do anything else. I cannot see through my tears. God bless you all.

Mama

April 23, 1956

Dearest Mother,

Well, finally the blundering American Express sent me your letter from Rome...our minds certainly work on the same track?...I have written to reserve a room for us; we’ll just each and talk the day you come, but for the next two I’ll get some theater tickets and we’ll plan jaunts to flowering parks, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square...walking, strolling, feeding pigeons and sunning ourselves like happy clams. Then, to Cambridge, where I have already reserved a room for you two nights...I have made a contract with one of my husky men to teach me how to manage a punt before you come, so you shall step one afternoon from you room at the beautiful Garden House Hotel right onto the Cam and be boated up to Granchester through weeping willows for tea in an orchard: Worry about nothing. Just let me know your predilections and it shall be accomplished....

You, alone, of all, have had crosses that would cause many a stronger woman to break under the never-ceasing load. You have borne daddy’s long, hard death and taken on a man’s portion in your work.; you have fought your own ulcer attacks, kept us children sheltered, happy, rich with art and music lessons, camp and play; you have seen me through that black night when the only word I knew was No and when I thought I could never write or think again; and, you have been brave through your own operation. Now, just as you begin to breathe, this terrible slow, dragging pain comes upon you, almost as if it would be too easy to free you so soon from the deepest, most exhausting care and giving of love.

...know with a certain knowing that you deserve, too, to be with the loved ones who can give you strength in your trouble: Warren and myself. Think of you trip here as a trip to the heart of strength in your daughter who loves you more dearly than words can say. I am waiting for you, and your trip shall be for your own soul’s health and growing. You need...a context where all burdens are not on your shoulders, where some loving person comes to heft the hardest, to walk beside you. Know this, and know that it is right you should come. You need to imbibe power and health and serenity to return to your job...

I feel with all my joy and life that these are qualities I can give you, from the fullness and brimming of my heart. So come, and slowly we will walk through green gardens and marvel at this strange and sweet world.

Your own loving sivvy

(Sylvia Plath)

Wed – 2:45

Dear Linda,

I am in the middle of a flight to St. Louis to give a reading. I was reading a New Yorker story that made me think of my mother and all alone in the seat I whispered to her "I know, Mother, I know." (Found a pen!) And I thought of you – someday flying somewhere all alone and me dead perhaps and you wishing to speak to me.

And I want to speak back. (Linda, maybe it won’t be flying, maybe it will be at your own kitchen table drinking tea come afternoon when you are 40. Anytime.) – I want to say back.

1^st I love you.

2. You never let me down.

3. I know. I was there once. I too, was 40 and with a dead mother who I needed still.

This is my message to the 40-year-old Linda. No matter what happens you were always my bobolink, my special Linda Gray. Life is not easy. It is awfully lonely, I know that. Now you too know it – wherever you are, Linda, talking to me. But I’ve had a good life – I wrote unhappy – but I lived to the hilt. You too, Linda – Live to the HILT! To the top, I love you, 40-year-old Linda, and I love what you do, what you find, what you are! – Be your own woman. Belong to those you love. Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart – I’m in both: if you need me. I lied, Linda. I did love my mother and she lobed me. She never held me but I miss her, so that I have to deny I ever loved her – or she me! Silly Anne! So there!

XOXOXO

Mom