LETTERS FROM HOME: CHRISTMAS UNDER SIEGE: IF YOU WANT ME I'LL BE IN THE CAR

Dec. 17, 1998

Dear Julie,

DC and I have been in a minor state of siege occasioned by the imminent arrival of her siblings and their families. They're coming from points in Missouri and from San Diego to celebrate both Christmas and their parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

Because we're the nominal hosts, we'll be entertaining some. That prospect has DC putting up new curtains in the dining room, with her father's help erecting a plate shelf in the kitchen -- the better to display all the knickknacks hiding out in the basement -- hanging paintings where I'd grown used to bare walls, painting the back stairwell.

We're having a house makeover. In the space of a few weeks, we're under taking projects only discussed in vague terms over the past three years.

On the positive side, there's now a shaving mirror in the bathroom to spare me some bloodshed, and by opening a set of sliding doors we found a room we forgot we had.

All of this is occurring while most people are decorating for the holidays. We picked out our Christmas tree, but it stands unadorned in the front hall, hoping to dress up for the debutante ball before drying into cronehood.

Ours is a house in chaos. Ladders in the kitchen, ladders in the dining room, boards and tape measures and screw drivers on the kitchen table. It's impossible to clean the floor because of the layers of disarray on top.

If we were an archaeological dig, scientists would conclude that this array of jumbled artifacts must have been produced by many generations of living. In fact, they arrived like the Big Bang.

This derangement is affecting my mental health. Maybe I was meant to be a Zen monk. I crave someplace spare, simple but most of all harmonious. I wish for the sound of one hand clapping not of two drills drilling.

Then a vision of my disheveled desk at work reminds me that I am very much part of the problem. My environment perfectly reflects my state of mind.

But there is no peaceful refuge anywhere, not even in the cars. The van has been loaded down with tools and projects in progress, and the truck is more of a shambles.

You once sent me a card pointing out that disorder presages order, that it is necessary to disrupt the status quo so that a grand new creation can emerge. I still take solace from that card. I wonder where it is.

I am no handyman. The plate rack was crafted by a carpenter and still we couldn't get it to go together. Finally, a cabinet maker who fixed the problem with a couple of spins of his saw and wouldn't take a cent of my gratitude.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

In contrast, DC envisions herself a cross between Bob Vila and Martha Stewart. The disease is hereditary. A week before the family is to arrive, her father has decided to redo his downstairs bathroom.

I need a sanctuary I pleaded a few nights ago as DC had reached a point of exhaustion for the evening. She snarled something about my poor timing.

But entering the van to go to work yesterday, I was shocked to find it spotless, empty of everything save one of my golf clubs. A card placed on the steering column read: "On the first and second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a vacuumed and washed used car."

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.