Owen’s hair is the kind of hair a girl wants: fine like spun gold—if it gets a knot in it, I have to extract every thread most gently, like I am untangling a spider’s web. Of course, he is disgusted if I use such words as ‘gossamer’ or ‘spun gold’ to describe him. Such beautiful buttery bodies they have, our children—that is, until they’re not children anymore. Owen is moving into the ‘not children’ world.

How does one protect them? Sometimes I think I would throw in every hope of my own, every dream of literary prowess or success, to protect him, even for one second, from any hurt that might come to him.

But would I, Tilde. Would I?

If it came to it, I wonder how I should make such a choice. I should hope that if ever given that choice I would make the right one, but I know I would resent it for the rest of my life. I would never be happy. I would be a bloody, injured banshee who ruined everyone around her.

What sort of a mother chooses a book over a child?

Sometimes I am not sure what I am capable of at all.

All my love,

Veda

† † †

1 FEB 1969

Dear Tilde,

Owen has asked for more Hot Wheels for his birthday. I’m giving you lots of preparation time, and I hope Hot Wheels means something to you—you are probably out of touch with the interests of young boys—but ask in any toyshop and they will know. Jo and I are buying him a complete racing track so any vehicular additions would be most welcome. His various hopes and aspirations have all congealed around the one current burning aim: to be a racing-car driver (or, if such options are beyond his reach, to work in a factory that manufactures racing cars).

Do what you will though, of course. If said purchase proves laborious, he will be made to compose a charming thank-you letter whatever the gift.

My book is due for publication ‘some time in the next year’ or so I’m told. The delays and postponements are heartbreaking. I have a small blunt-instrument headache at the mere thought of it. But I try to put the difficulties behind me. Have had, in the meantime, two other things published: one in Crosscurrents, a little magazine quite well thought of, and another in something called City Voo-Doo (which I have a feeling will exist for about three editions and then go defunct).

The thing is (and I admit this cautiously and own it as a challenge): I am still finding it quite difficult to work without a drink. I find myself wanting to write that in invisible ink, lemon juice, or in such teeny-weeny writing you need to get a magnifying glass out to read it. But I tell you because I know you won’t judge me, and admitting it enables me to look it in the face, so to speak. My working days were always all about alcoholic beverages. The beverages knitted together the whole painful stop-start line-for-line word-for-word process. What does one do in the gaps without it?—there is a process, a pause, between thought and creation and it requires a prop. A cigarette is no contender. And they say cigarettes will kill me too.