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temperament, which was so much like the sea, changing from “one mood to another—from high waves on dark, stormy days, to tranquil ripples on sunny days.” She found it disturbing that so much history was happening while her own surroundings were complacent and placid compared to the horrors Hans had witnessed.
    These letters explain a good deal about the poet who wrote “Daddy” and her desire to integrate her own family story with the Holocaust. Even at this young age, she felt touched by history that had not yet touched her. Here was a sensibility that felt implicated in what had been done to Hans and his people. She wanted to “ plunge into the vital world,” acknowledging ruefully that war could not be as real to her as it had been to Hans. It bothered her that this should be so. Expressions of yearning to go abroad to remedy the insufficiency of her own comfortable upbringing are startling to read in the prose of a tenth grader. Only two years later she would confide to her journal that she felt the “ weight of centuries” suffocating her.
    Sylvia spoke of her connection to Europe through her Austrian grandparents. Indeed, Aurelia had spoken German growing up in her family, the Schobers, and Sylvia heard stories about the anti-German sentiment abroad in America during World War I, when Aurelia was growing up in a primarily Irish neighborhood. Rather than rejecting her ethnic background, Sylvia said she took “patriotic pride” in it. She made a point of giving an oral report about Thomas Mann, a world famous author and anti-Fascist who had become a celebrated figure in America. She told Hans that in class she had read aloud part of his letter describing Mann’s recent visit to Germany.
    Sylvia sometimes stayed with her grandparents when her mother was working full time in order to afford extras like camp for both her children. In Sylvia’s journal, she mentions Grampy’s admiration for everything she does and Grammy’s rich recipes, which appealed to a child with an enormous appetite. Sylvia was also fond of her Uncle Frank, who came to her in dreams dressed as Superman. This extended family, with ties to the “old country,” made Sylvia acutely conscious of what it meant to be an American, while also giving her, at a very young age, a remarkably cosmopolitan perspective that helped her shy away from any form of jingoism.
    In her letter of 30 May 1950, Sylvia announced that she had been accepted to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, about ninety miles from Wellesley. With her high scholastic average and extracurricular record (working on the school newspaper, playing basketball, participating in student government), she could have been admitted to Wellesley on a town scholarship and saved money by living at home. But like many ambitious students, she wanted to test herself by going away to college and, of course, away from her mother. But not too far away. Aurelia was Sylvia’s lifeline no matter how much she resented her mother—or at least her overwhelming need to confide in Aurelia. Aurelia bore the weight of what Sylvia expected of herself and seems not to have objected to her daughter’s desire to attend Smith. Indeed, Aurelia later told scholar Judith Kroll that she welcomed all signs of her daughter’s growing independence.
    It obviously pleased Sylvia, as well, that even though she received some scholarship aid, she was going to have to work in order to afford her first year at Smith. As she wrote Hans, she would be laboring on a farm that summer, biking back and forth to work in fields and in a greenhouse, “rain or shine.” Her only previous experience of this kind had been a day at camp picking blueberries for ten cents a quart. She anticipated sore muscles but also seemed to enjoy the prospect of breaking herself in—and yes, getting a tan. Sylvia would stick it out through a long, tiring summer, making