He Would Give His Hawk to Any Man Who’d Ask For It

A letter from parent to child - Ted and Nicholas Hughes

Most of my blog is my own diary and opinion. Occasionally I press something in between its pages like a butterfly wing. This is one of those times.

Below is a letter from Ted Hughes, in 1986, to his 23-year-old son, Nicholas, reprinted from the Letters of Ted Hughes.

Dear Nick, 

I hope things are clearing.

It did cross my mind, last summer, that you were under strains of an odd sort. I expect, like many another, you'll spend your life oscillating between fierce relationships that become tunnel traps, and sudden escapes into wide freedom when the whole world seems to be just there for the taking.

Nobody's solved it. You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.

I came to America, when I was 27, and lived there three years as if I were living inside a damart sock—I live…