Alessandra, I was heartened to read all the messages following your latest entry, even though your own words acted on me like the seventy pound backpack they strap on you for a glacier crossing in the NOLS program. (Our eldest son Sam remembers that from Alaska as one of the hardest times in his life, emotionally as well as physically. The urge to quit had never been so palpable!!) OK, so time for a little faltering maybe but then it's necessary to regroup, eat your spinach like Popeye, and flex those muscles to take on the bad guy again. Your troops are all here, mustering for another seige, looking to you for continued inspiration, and trying to flood you with our combined indefatigable psychic energies and confidence in you. If ever there was a person who could shoulder an almost inhuman burden and trudge over a hostile glacier, putting one foot doggedly in front of another, it is YOU. It's bitter cold and sometimes you are horribly alone and the wind buffets you something fierce and maybe some numbness creeps in...but there's a finite distance you have to travel and someone behind you is putting her boots in your footprint and thanking you from the bottom of her heart and there's a meal to cook over a bunsen burner and a really warm sleeping bag to climb into soon and you CAN DO THIS you say to yourself because there is no turning back and you need to get out of the cold, slip that backpack off, and let the camraderie of your fellow climbers envelop you, making you smile and even laugh.
The next time I write, I will send you a picture of our newest grandchild, Cecilia, five days old now, a little six pound angel, the first for our youngest son Jim and his wife Susannah. Naturally the first word I thought of when I heard her name was "Jubilation!" That is ALSO what we are all going to say one day soon when you've licked your battle. We LOVE YOU.
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