LETTERS FROM HOME: EVEN IN CALIFORNIA, THE EGGMAN COMETH

March 31, 1994

Dear Grandma,

Tens of orange and red and yellow tulips are growing in the round brick planter that takes up half our front yard. They're still clenched this morning against the chill but by the time DC arrives for lunch they'll be welcoming the sun with open petals.

We're readying the house for the arrival of the clan. Wish you were coming too. Sally said the little girls are worried that the Easter bunny won't be able to find them in California. Fat, chocolatey chance.

Last Sunday, I played guitar while children carrying palm fronds paraded through DC's church and the congregation sang "When Jesus Came to Jerusalem." Reading the program, I wondered if the minister was going to give a sermon about Mexican food, but "Like a Burrito" turned out to be a lesson praising the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem. About getting the job done while high drama consumed everyone else.

I never went to church much until I married DC. She plays the organ for services sometimes, and mows the church lawn. I just like being there with her. And I admit that sometimes the singing is stirring. One week when the minister asked people what they wanted to give thanks for, an elder stood and said, "The song we just sang. Sometimes I think we should just shut up and sing."

The minister didn't appear to be insulted.

She is an earnest person who divorced at midlife and went to theology school. Each Sunday, she gives a sermon for about 10 people at a little town south of here and then scoots at the very top of the speed limit to say many of the same things to her congregation of 50 here in Garberville.

One day she asked me if I minded being in church, since DC had told her I wasn't exactly a card-carrying Christian. I said not at all. I told her I believe it's all true. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Native American spirituality, Confuscianism, New Age. Whatever you believe, it's true. Anais Nin, a writer who "sensed" truths, said, "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

I sure believe in whatever it is that opens those tulips and the eyes of little girls and boys on Easter morning.

Of course, we'll all go to church. The men are relieved to hear that nobody wears suits to church here. I'm sure the women won't settle for jeans, though. The little girls will be dressed for the rotogravure.

Afterward, we'll have baked ham and potato salad made with sweet pickles, and gallons of iced tea. Mom's strawberry whipped cream cake might even show up. DC likes to keep up traditions.

Kyle and I can play wiffle ball. Over the tall hedge that surrounds the patio is a home run. The house and yard are made for little girls who like to explore -- a maze of rooms and doors revealing DC's parakeets and finches and teddy bears and toys, and outside lots of big, flowery bushes and a couple of workshops filled with such things as syrup dispensers from an old soda fountain and the harpsichord DC's father made her. The wild things that don't quite fit into adults' daily lives.

Your Easter get-together will be smaller this year thanks to all this, and I hope you don't mind. I guess it's a rule that when life flows in one direction it has to ebb in the other. Thankfully, like Easter, it returns again and again and again.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian. He is currently on a leave of absence and living in Garberville, Calif.