Motherload

Dear Friend, I went on holiday with you, to write. We had the most glorious week, sitting with computers and books out in the late summer Corfu sunshine, gin at six on the terrace, views of the cerulean Ionian Sea towards Albania, ruminating, me on Motherload, you on the Romantics. Each evening saw us sauntering towards a harbourside restaurant, where you laughed as I ate a lot of Greek Cheese Pie, and calamari that made me sick on the last night. We managed to eat at Gerald Durrell's villa, much to the envy of my children. We returned together, with our small bags, sitting side by side on the flight, quietly reading, occasionally muttering to each other. We parted at the baggage reclaim with a brief hug and kiss. I rolled my weekend bag away from you, did not look back, through customs, and out to the dreary tube back to Bounds Green. At one point, you asked me a question, ministering to me as you were that week, making me tea, making me sit down and keep working, keeping m...

Rebecca Solnit has published the most wonderful essay in Harper's Magazine this morning. She, or her editor, have also managed to give it the best title – 'The Mother of all Questions'. On the face of it her essay is a response to all the pigs who've ever hounded her for not having a baby, but it is so much more than that. In it she comes up with an excellent term for the best way to respond to a closed, negative, spiteful question: to be rabbinical . I'm not sure that I could borrow that word, being so completely unJewish as I am. But I, too, long for a word for that way of being which allows you to respond to spite by gently reflecting it back, opening up its painful, mean little folds, and helping your hound to see a bigger picture. I'm currently reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead , a yearning love letter from a dying father to his future adult son. There is that same quality of mercy, and perpetual wonder, that in anyone else's hands would soun...