A few months after meeting Sydney Bacon, Joyce Maynard’s mother, Fredelle wrote this, in a letter to a friend:
You ask if ‘I’m in love again.’ No, it’s not that. ‘In love’ was the experience with Max, so many years ago and for so long. ‘In love’ was feeling one would go anywhere, do anything, give up everyone else to be with the beloved. It was wanting to fuse completely with the other, be part of him. I am deeply glad to have had that experience, but I couldn’t be in love again. I know now that no other person can complete me and make me whole. That I must do for myself. I know there is no freedom in a relationship based on mutual need. I would not give up my family or my friends for love, or my work, because those things are part of me and I would be fatally changed and lessened by their loss. I do not say ‘never’ and ‘always’ any more. In love? I love Sydney. That’s quite different.
Featured image: Fredelle and Sydney Bacon