April 14, 1873

Dear Polly,

I am so glad to be in receipt of your letter, dear friend, and I will not keep you in suspense—what a help it has been these past days to re-read your words and hear your voice, now earnest, now dry, just exactly what I need each time I seek it out! You are quite a prodigious letter writer, Polly, I positively quail before you and can only be thankful that you turn the majority of your clever and incisive mind towards mathematics and philosophy, else my own meager literary contributions would be overwhelmed by whatever you chose to produce and then Plumfield's north chimney would never draw properly, as we cannot repair it until my "An Adventuress Abroad in Algiers" returns a fat check. In fact, I must confess I wonder you don't solve Edwin Drood for poor Dr. Jed and put him out of his misery—yes, I laughed aloud as you intended when I read that and Fritz looked up from his dusty tome and smiled such a smile to hear glum Jo all giddy sunshine again. I have seen him wondering why I am so subdued but it is not his way to pry, only to look at me with his dark eyes and stroke his beard and sigh a little, Teutonically.

I did appreciate your vow of discretion, but really, Polly, it is unnecessary. I trust both you and Dr. Jed have only my best interests at heart and if you are moved to speak to your husband about my letter, do not hesitate. I hate to think I am creating a rift between two such dear people and it may be that you feel he would have some perspective to offer that would be a help. I don't think I am being very vain to suggest I am something of a favorite of Dr. Jed's and when he is not engaged in banter or consumed with his latest intellectual occupation, I've always found him to have such an easy way about him, especially for a man in conversation with women. Has he always been thus? He is not solemn like Fritz can be or calmly wise like my father, but he does listen more than the vast majority of men do and I've always liked how ready he is to admit when another has scored a point off him. Those months I stayed with you, I wished to achieve that success more than I was able but watching him speak with you or Dr. Harris was a surpassing delight—in fact, I think Dr. Jed often preferred to be caught out in some elaborate explanation as if he were teetering on a cliff and lo, you must run to rescue him from himself! His growls were comical when Dr. Harris would so neatly box him in, but what a fond, tender look he'd give you when one of your elegant explications or swift rebuttals knocked down his flawed argument. It was a gift for me to see such a different marriage than my parents' could still be so happy, that conflict could be engaged in and even enjoyed before resolution without simply being avoided.

I must not dilly-dally any further, for even such a paragon of patience as yourself must wonder if I have found some happiness and peace lately. The answer is typically Jo-ian, I suppose, an amalgam of yes, no and maybe in a sort of jumbled salad. Plumfield might be better called Gingerfield these days, for all the ginger tea, candied ginger and ginger cake I eat. Lemon has been less successful though I suspect I will hardly be able to look a gingerbread in the eye this Christmas. And yet, it was not the change in my diet or the spicy fragrance filling the whole house to the rafters that led to me telling Fritz my news, no, nothing so simple as that. Only three days ago, I fainted dead away and what a commotion it caused! Despite the years of practice in our amateur theatricals, I gather there was nothing elegant or romantic about it—I did not drift down like a lily so much a crumple like a puppet with its strings cut. What a flurry when I opened my eyes to see the housemaid waving her apron in my face and hollering for help as if the Four Horsemen were upon us! Somehow, I gathered myself and convinced her to stop her screeching before she took her turn and fainted herself. She managed to act as my crutch as I retired to my bedroom, hoping a rest would be enough, but I was then beset by such illness I had hardly had a basin in hand in time to prevent an awful mess.

It was just after the third bout that Fritz burst into the room, nearly mad with worry after being alerted that I was at the verge of expiration and he must make haste! If my poor dear man had not been so frightened, it would have been an amusing scene— my hair had fallen down completely and I looked like one of Macbeth's mad witches, complete with stinking cauldron, and poor Fritz, red as a devil, not even wearing his coat, his cravat flapping about. What Aunt March would have said! Such a stream of panicked German poured from him, I couldn't find a way to stem the tide. It was as if the Danube had risen from its very banks and meant to deluge every city on its shore. After much hand-patting and hushing, he finally was seeming to calm and then I upset him all over again with the fourth return of my own upset. As soon as I could be left on the bed, he started walking to the door, calling for the doctor to be called "this very instant! Jetzt sofort!" and I could hardly make myself heard over him to tell him to stop. So of course, that was how I shared my news, blurting out "No, no doctor, you needn't, it's only the baby!" and I couldn't say which of us was the more shocked, Polly, really, you could have knocked both of us over with a feather, with a feather to spare!

Friedrich came and sat beside me then, so carefully, and pushed the hanks of hair back from my face—his hands were trembling. "Wirklich und wahrhaftig, meine liebchen?" was all he said and after my clumsy exclamation, it was all I could do to nod. I'd never before seen the expression he had then, like the wonder a child has first seeing the stars in the night sky but there was nothing child-like about it. I could tell he was so concerned for me, not just being ill, but that he knew how I might struggle with it and so he… contained everything he felt. It was not as if I was giving him a gift or making a dream come true, but I knew, I know, that it gave him an unqualified joy to know we would have a child together. I hadn't thought of it till I sat to write to you, but that moment, that expression on Fritz's face, was something only a wife and mother experiences—watching the realization on your husband's face that he is to be a father when minutes before there was not even the slightest suspicion. A woman will always have a little worry, a little hope, there is never a time without the question beating in her heart but not a man. Perhaps it is wrong (pacem, Polly!) but that has been what I have loved most about this child—that look on Fritz's face when he knew it was true and the new love I saw for me then. All he would do was hold my hand and stroke my cheek lightly and look at me; what could I do but throw myself into his arms then, my hair everywhere, such a horrid tangle, and he simply held me and said as if it were another wedding vow, "Only let me care for thee, my Jo, my Miss March with the most beautiful grey eyes, the loveliest mind."

Well enough, then. Somehow, with hardly a minute to think, my wise professor had found just the thing to say to me, to make bearing this child not a burden for me alone but a worthy undertaking for our partnership. And because I often have only the merest shell of modest womanhood about me, I gave a great sniff and rubbed my face into his shirtsleeves and then hiccoughed—how quickly he reached for something, though there was not a basin at hand. He is not a saint and he looked greatly relieved when I told him I would not be unwell again and then, Polly, that man! He looked at me and there was a glint in his eye, an undoubted and incontrovertible glint, and what did he say? "Perhaps, Liebchen, perhaps it might be an adventure?" He looked so pleased with himself then, so sure he had found the key, and because that was what he was proud of, how to make Jo a little easier with the upending news I ought to have told him all blushes and smiles, but was instead topsy-turvy Jo about it, because of that I laughed, a great, unladylike laugh, and then so did he and kissed me soundly.

So, I am happy at times now and the dread has receded a bit, but not entirely. The lure of an adventure helps but I can't say there aren't times when all I see is ominous clouds or worse, the sense of being locked away. Fritz knows about the baby and he knows that I'm not eager to knit or sew swaddling, though I couldn't say he knows the depth of my concerns and I have not found the right words to convey it to him, despite my authorial aspirations. I cannot imagine how I will find time or the tranquility around me to search the storm within myself but I suppose I must ask Fritz for help and not try to manage it all alone—all that will yield is an enormous Jo-sized muddle, due by-and-by, to grow even more enormous. That, dear Polly, is the least of my concerns and I do take comfort, when I grow grim and grey and sour with myself, that at the very least I haven't an ounce of vanity about any of this. I recall Meg told me how Sallie Moffat Copley cried at a tea for a solid quarter hour when she realized she wouldn't be able to wear her favorite blue silk to a garden party due to her increasing dimensions; I don't think I could have been as gracious as Meg, who patted her hand and spoke of Sallie's lovely lace shawl and new bonnet. Can you imagine? Though, as I wish not to be as I am, perhaps Sallie does as well and was only overmatched…

It is so restful to write to you, Polly—I feel certain I may blather and yarn about and you will only laugh a little but still notice when there is something that needs attention. Perhaps this is a skill you honed as a Head Nurse? I find myself, some of these long afternoons when I am prostrated with fatigue but my mind is still eager and busy, I find I wonder if you miss nursing and running a hospital—or rather, I know that you do miss it, but I wonder how and why and how you manage it. I imagine you were quite commanding with a cape and a special little bonnet, alternately stern and sweet, but perhaps it was nothing like that. Father doesn't speak much of his time as a chaplain during the War and Meg's husband John only talks in abstractions about honor and justice and I know it cannot have been so idealistic. Indeed, whatever ideals I had as a girl have all tumbled quite to the ground and I am surrounded by empty pedestals; perhaps Amy will sculpt me an array of Muses to replace Love and Virtue and Bravery. It would suit her to a T, to work among the marble in a clean white smock over her lovely dress… Jo you would find as you expect, scribbling away, ink smudging every finger and likely the tip of my nose, papers scattered about and the sound of the children getting muddy in the yard. I would like it if you wrote to me of Alexandria and Boston and Manchester, how you remain a wife and widow while you are a mother now, and how you are Polly to Sophy Watson and me, Mrs. Foster to Patty and Mrs. H and the congregation at Grace Street, and Dr. Jed's sweet Molly—how I blushed the day I heard him greet you so at the door and how you both laughed to see me, redder than a cranberry bog! Please send all my love to your family, from the greatest to the smallest, each in its proper measure (and then a little extra because that is Aunt Jo's way).

Most fondly, most ginger-y, your friend,

Jo March Bhaer