Our days are Like Full Years A Memoir with Letters From Louis Khan by Harriet Pattison

 Our days are Like Full

Years A Memoir with Letters From Louis Khan by Harriet Pattison is a moving, big book released by Yale Press. 

First of all this one is a love-story. Harriet studied at the Yale Drama section of the university in 1953, when, one day this architect, a teacher of Yale, Louis Khan, 27 years more old than her, joined the students chatting for some time with them. Harriet remained impressed by his eyes. 

Years later she met him again and this one they started a clandestine relationship. 

The family at some point was worried because they didn't see Harriet still settled down. Later Harriet would have told to his relatives what was going on.

Everyone agreed that this one couldn't be the best choice for a girl: having a relationship with a married man was a danger for the future. 

Louis, called by Harriet Lou, was a busy architect and worked substantially in the entire world. Once he was contacted also by Jacqueline Kennedy; after the tragical departure of John Kennedy in Dallas, Jacqueline thought that it was necessary to build a place for keeping alive the memory of her beloved husband.

Later the commission was assigned at someone else, remarks Harriet.

Being Lou a married man, of course this relationship had all the tastes of a story lived  in its partiality. 

Most times as it happen in these cases, Harriet insisted with Lou for living an existence together; sometimes Lou promised; other ones he was firm: no. When Harriet discovered she was pregnant, her family, terrorized, insisted with Khan and also with the wife of Khan: they had to divorce. But no, Louis, neither his wife, agreed.

Harriet escaped away when still the pregnancy not visible: hiding the pregnancy was the best way for avoiding questions of this "unusual" birth and saving her reputation.

Lou worked a lot, visiting many places, and every time wrote to Harriet intense love-letters with drawings, sketches of palaces, places. Creative letters and postcards where he detailed everyday with meticulousness, telling to Harriet his fantastic existence spent in the various continents. These letters, these postcards have been a lot for Harriet. She spent long periods all alone, without to seeing Lou and these letters were a great comfort for her, and, Nathaniel apart, the strongest signal of his passage in her existence.

One day, when in her 90s, Harriet reopened the chinese cinnabar box rediscovering the correspondence sent by Lou. Her past existence reappeared like for magic: "I found him in every phrase," added and for once, she decided of keeping opened the chinese cinnabar box, sharing with the rest of the world her existence; precisely, her 15 years with Lou.

The end of Louis Khan has been incredibly sad: he suffered of cardiac problems and one day  collapsed in the men's room in Penn Station but not having written any home address, for privacy I guess, they searched for him in office, thinking that that one could be his house.

Not finding anyone, Louis was treated as a missing person and for two days his body remained unclaimed. 

Harriet and Nathaniel wants to keep alive the legacy left by Louis Khan, a man, an architect and... a man of words!

Highly recommended.

I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori