LETTERS FROM HOME: GIVE ME A HOME IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

Oct. 26, 1995

Dear Patty,

As I write this, our new puppies Hank and Lucy are peacefully sleeping at my feet, which is not only a Saturday Evening Post scene but a rare one.

Usually they're tussling over a pair of DC's pantyhose or nipping at each other's ears and paws, or trying to shinny up the side of our bed, or tearing the foam insulation away from the air conditioner, or whining because one of us has left the room, or relieving themselves when and where you least expect it, or climbing inside the dishwasher, or yelping because I've forgotten once again that puppies most often are found beneath your feet.

I try to look at it from their perspective way down there, where a shoe is the size of a boulder and a step a fearsome precipice. From the vantage point of less than a foot high, there's a whole new world to sink your teeth into.

They are a concoction of breeds, we suspect, but beautiful in the way a French-Malaysian woman might be. Hank is smaller and kind of scared, maybe because he started life by being thrown away. But Lucy had the same experience and she's a hellion. Hank's named for the unassuming baseball hero, Lucy for the Devil.

She's not malevolent or evil. Evil is the absence of love, and Lucy has plenty. Let's say her aggressiveness is limitless, which sometimes turns poor Hank into a whimpering puddle.

I guess bringing up puppies is a lot like having babies only easier, which gives me new respect for parents. I have avoided these responsibilities up to now, maybe because I knew I wasn't grown up enough for them. But maybe nobody ever is. Maybe parenthood is a ready or not proposition.

It's a nice time to be in the Midwest. Fall has just arrived, bringing sunny days, cool nights, falling leaves of sycamore, birch, oak, maple and walnut. Most of the trees in our yard are very old and fill it with limbs after a good wind. DC wants to plant some new ones down by the street, new roots taking hold.

After two years of emotional upheavals -- marriage, miscarriages and moving -- and physical dislodgings and 180-degree schedules, we are striving for something that looks like normalcy. Or equilibrium.

You know, a meal seated at our kitchen table with the puppies frolicking at our feet. Watching a sitcom together in the den while telling the puppies to stop biting our feet. Mending the fence together on a Saturday afternoon and searching for the puppies.

Maybe it sounds boring and maybe people just don't live that way any more. But there is a sweet simplicity in the picture for me.

My friend Leslie just returned from a retreat in Washington state where a group of people sat in meditation for six hours a day and spent two days in complete silence. Afterward, she said, simply cutting up vegetables in the kitchen was a joyous experience.

Leslie, who writes for the Los Angeles Times and lives on the ocean in an exclusive Southern California neighborhood, found delight in slicing carrots.

Oh oh, the puppies are waking up. They'll want food, attention, a nice walk. Don't we all.

Love, Sam

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