LETTERS FROM HOME: GOING 'ROUND AND 'ROUND UNTIL YOU FIND YOUR WAY HOME

Nov. 27, 1997

Dear Adams family,

In the years I lived in the land called California, I met a beautiful young girl named Angela. Angela's occupation was to make other people feel beautiful, and for this she had great talent. People came from far away to have Angela place her hands on them, and in those moments they were transformed into gods and goddesses. She drew their beauty out. It was magical.

Yours is a family of conjurers. Patrick commands athletic teams and Arlene writes, but together created a magnificent family: John, a teacher/lawyer/writer; Erin, an artist; Peter, an actor; Duke, a teacher; Emily, a journalist; Dominick, a musician; Tom, an artist; Christine, a professor of literature; and Angela, the summoner of beauty.

Into this picture one day walked this lost man searching for something he could not name. I looked everywhere. Stared into the surf for hours, held hands with strangers at sunrise on the Harmonic Convergence, explored the eyes of Catherine and Ellen and Carol and Dixie and others, and in my own eyes -- reflected in the mirrors of beach bars late at night -- saw it wasn't there.

Then Angela found me and drew me out, made me think of myself differently. Challenged me to feel something. Sometimes the feelings hurt.

Eventually, Angela invited me to Thanksgiving with you. And there, sitting around the pushed-together tables, was the outline of my holy grail: a circle of love.

A charged current ran around the room, an electrical exchange of laughter and conversation and familiarity and proximity.

This was not Ozzie and Harriet's family. Much better. It was real. Real kisses and hugs and kidding and even real squabbles.

I witnessed the bond of love making it possible to accept others on their own terms. You accepted me as your own as well, but your love for each other shown in another direction.

I went away to Big Sur, where I found many more people like myself, people searching for answers to their own riddles. One was in these lines by Galway Kinnell: "The bud stands for all things, even those things that never flower. For everything flowers from within of self-blessing."

The riddles eventually led home, where I began to rediscover my own family. It took awhile. It's taking its time. But that Thanksgiving in California made all the difference.

Angela writes that she'll be missing from your Thanksgiving table this year. There are bad feelings, she says.

The circle expands and contracts but it does not break.

My own parents are off to Nashville to celebrate with my brother and his family. My sister's family is visiting in Arkansas. And DC and her sister's clan are joining their parents at the family cabin.

I'm working, so my circle today will run through Nashville, Arkansas, a cabin near Marble Hill and places in California.

Circles of love come in many shapes.

Love, Sam

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