Tuesday, January 1st, 1856.
Fair and very cold.
This morning,
ice in our bedroom for the first time all winter.
The water froze on the potatoes
as soon as they were washed.
With little pride, and less hope,
we begin the new year.
On the porch after sunup,
I could hear the low chirping of sparrows
in the hedgerows that are now buried in the snow.
Dyer has maintained that with good health,
and a level head,
there is always an excellent chance
for a farmer willing to work.
He feels he can never fully rid himself of his burdens.
And I'm certain that because his mind is in such a bad state,
it affects his whole system.
He told me this morning
that contentment was like a friend he never gets to see.
You're late with the milking.
She wasn't suffering.
And you?
Since our acquisition of this farm,
my husband had kept a ledger to help him see the year whole.
This way he knows what each crop
and field pays from year to year.
And Dyer has asked me to keep a diary of matters
that might otherwise go overlooked...
From tools lent out to bills outstanding.
That I have done.
But there would be no record in these dull and simple pages
of the most passionate circumstances
of our seasons past.
No record of our emotions or fears.
Our greatest joys.
Our most piercing sorrows.
With our child,
it was as if I'd found my bearings.
But I too rarely told her that she was our treasure.
Would you like to try?
Like this, papa?
That's it.
She often seemed separate from us,
as if she was working at just fitting in where she could.
They saw his brothers and sisters
and they were the mouse's family...
There is something so affecting
about mute and motionless grief and illness
in a child so young.
She put her arms around me and said nothing else.
But it felt like we were speaking.
I have become my grief.
I have become my grief.
"Welcome sweet day of rest",
says the hymn.
And Sunday is most welcome for its few hours of quiet ease.
As for me.
I no longer attend.
After the calamity of Nellie's loss,
what calm I enjoy
does not derive from the notion of a better world to come.
I want to purchase an atlas.
-It could be a bother. -No, no. No bother.
Who is that?
His name is Finney.
-His wife Tallie. -Hyah!
I met them at the feed store.
They seem to keep to themselves.
They're renting the Zebrun farm.
Monday, February 4th.
Why is ink like fire?
Because it is a good servant,
and a hard master.
Did you say something?
I want to purchase an atlas.
I suppose there are more frivolous purchases
one could make.
I've saved 90 cents of my own.
I can't imagine a better way to spend it.
Could buy your husband a gift.
What better gift could I give him
than a wife who is no longer a dullard?
My self-education
seems the only way to keep my unhappiness
from overwhelming me.
Good afternoon.
I've been using a broom on my porch.
The snow is so dry.
I'm Tallie.
Abigail.
I hope I'm not intruding.
No.
I just, I needed to get away for the day.
The farm is a slaughterhouse right now.
My husband is killing his hogs.
Would you like to come in?
Yes, I'd love that.
Or we could just stay out on the porch, shivering.
I know it's the dullest of all things
to have an ignorant neighbor come by
and spoil a Sunday afternoon.
Oh, no, you're the most welcome here.
But I know the feeling.
Sometimes, I imagine during the Widow Weldon's visits
that I've been plunged up to my eyes in a vat of the prosaic.
Oh, Widow Weldon!
She got going on the county levy once...
She saw I had noticed her hair,
and admitted she had been vain about it as a girl.
She said that back then, she'd worn it longer
and plaited in a bun at the back of her head.
In the winter sun through the window,
her skin had an underflush of rose and violet
which so disconcerted me that I had to look away.
As always,
when it came to speaking
and attempting to engage another's affections,
circumstances doomed me to striving and anxiety.
From my earliest youth, I was like a pot-bound root,
all curled in upon itself.
I hope I'm not keeping you from something.
No.
I'm glad you've come.
Finney saw your husband at the cooperage.
He mentioned his new method for farrowing his piglets.
With some asperity?
My husband mentions everything with some asperity.
I told him that once,
and...