Doing what's in your nature

Nov. 23, 2006

Dear Adams family,

Here's hoping everyone made it home for Thanksgiving. Looking around your Thanksgiving table nearly 20 years ago, I'd never seen such a big family, no doubt quadrupled by now.

My own family will converge on Cape Girardeau from Ohio and Mississippi today, the first time in a long while we're in one place at the same time. Usually the nephew or one of the nieces is off on an adventure during breaks, or my brother's playing music somewhere.

They're always going somewhere. That's who they are. Like Willie Nelson says, "A hummingbird cannot glide high on thermal winds, and a hawk cannot hover in front of a tiny flower.

"If it's in your nature to stay constantly on the go -- as it is in mine -- then you have to keep moving or else you will fall."

Willie says happiness comes from being true to your nature.

My days in California were spent trying to figure out what that was. Was I a Humboldt County hippie, an Orange County wannabe surfer, a cosmopolitan San Franciscan? I was looking in the mirror hoping to see someone I recognized, someone who felt normal to me.

My brother co-wrote the title song on Sammy Kershaw's new CD, "Honky Tonk Boots." He has been entertaining people in bars for most of his adult life. My parents have longed for him to get a stable job, but that's not in his nature. A musician can't do much about the condition of being a musician.

I used to be restless, too, but like it right here right now. I've lived in nearly 30 apartments and houses since college, but DC and I have been in our house on South Lorimier Street for 11 years now. The chew marks the dogs made on the stairs when they were puppies are part of me.

I like waking up just as DC is leaving for work and hearing our dogs Alvie and Lucy climb the miniature stairs up to our bed to see me. I give Lucy's brother Hank a lift because he's scared to climb.

I like admiring our neighbor Frank's newest home improvement project, often involving climbing onto the roof, well knowing my idea of home improvement is a bigger TV.

I like listening to Bruce Zimmerman's band on Thursday nights.

I like knowing beings who smile or wag their tails when I approach.

We nearly lost Alvie last weekend. His kidneys failed, and he had to have dialysis for a few hours Sunday. We'll know soon whether Alvie has acute or chronic renal failure. We're hoping for the acute kind -- ARF, for short -- because not much can be done about the other.

Alvie's lack of house-training has done a lot of damage to our floors over the past three years, but right now we are thankful to see him pee anywhere he wants to.

At the beginning of his career, Willie Nelson dressed in the clothes the record companies in Nashville wanted him to wear and sang the songs they wanted him to sing. He did all right but wasn't happy. When he moved back home to Texas he grew his hair long and sang his own songs. That made him happy.

"Chances are, you think you are the most normal person in your entire circle of family, friends and co-workers. I mean it, face it, isn't there something just a little bit strange ab out every dang one of them? They're just not normal.

"There is no normal. There's only you and me."

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.