January 28, 1963: A four-page letter on political philosophy. "Socialism must grow 'upward,' expanding its reforms effectively with total support, instead of 'outward' expansion. By this course our progress will understandably be slow, but can failure be possible?"

Well, yes, it can. You never expect a Nixon/Reagan/Bush - much less the Spanish Inquisition. More recently known as the religious right. I digress from the past.

He thanks me for an article I sent on democracy, with notes on the margins which he liked as potential as future thought provokers. He also thanks me for the "above question." Looking back, I see at the top of the letter, underlined: "Is (sic) Economic Socialism and Intellectual freedom and Individuality Compatible?" "You really hit my weaak spot there," he continues. "Anytime I feel I might be able to sign up a follower of the way, look out."

I think he may have seen us as another Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Damn! Don't I just wish it could have been so. But it couldn't, as we well understand by now. Sometimes I think I am overstating my reasons for leaving him - that is, making them too intellectual, too understandable, too rational. Making myself continue to look good. Sometimes I think the truth is that I just left him for somebody tall, dark and handsome. Who lived in the city. Whose mother was Italian Catholic, not Lutheran. Who I divorced because, although he was a thoroughly nice guy, he bored me silly. So I have few illusions about my own depth of character - shallow as a mud puddle, I often say.

But this letter reminds me that there is a grain of truth in my rationalizations. I have a tiny grain of remembrance, reading this, that I feared I would never live up to his high expectations. And ever since then, I have chosen men who were, except for one, fairly well below my own intellectual level. I married the only other one I found. He was the second husband. But I left him too.