LETTERS FROM HOME: IN EXOTIC PLACES DANCING ALONE AND TWO BY TWO

April 6, 1994

Dear Carol,

It's been so long since I heard from you. Everyone knows these periods of silence. My friend Pat sent me a postcard once that said: "The mountain people tell of seeing your footprints in the snow." She's a good myth-maker.

I imagine you dancing in exotic places where the sound of drums rolls over a moonlit glen while sinewy shapes cavort with the God in their heads, or maybe just a small, seated figure plays a wooden flute on a sand dune encircled by a gyrating mass.

Why does dancing feel so good? And why are so many of us afraid to do it freely?

I spent the night at one of my first dances looking for the nerve to ask a beauty named Debbie Baker to dance. Never did, even though she was very nice and probably would've said yes. Things like that can affect you. It's not the dancing, it's the other sex and the asking.

In Big Sur you don't have to be asked (or accepted) to dance. You just do what you feel. When Baba Olatunje came on the Fourth of July the dancing went on from noon until past midnight, anywhere and everywhere. Ahh-ooooooo.

Here, DC and I are doing the dance of the been-married-a-year-and-a-halves. A few nights ago, I watched the NCAA basketball championship while DC and her mother visited in the kitchen. Every so often my name popped through the doorway.

It was comforting to imagine my wife discussing my career opportunities or my opinions about the new kitchen curtains with her mother. Of course, she might have been complaining about my ambitions or taste in lace.

The thing about partner dancing is, someone has to lead. Theoretically, we want a 50-50 partnership, but does that mean all the decisions and responsibilities must be split down he middle?

Occasionally in a stressful moment, DC will say, "You're the male. Would you please take control of this situation?" I'll look at her both appalled and confused. Is this what women want, Dr. Freud?

I don't think so. One thing DC wants is help in circumstances that give her trouble. I like that myself.

If in a crowd of strangers I feel my sweet introvert squeezing my arm in a death grip, my part is not to complain but to soothe her. And if occasionally I am overwhelmed by the chaos of activity that informs her day-to-day life, she provides silence.

It's not 50 percent down the middle. It's 80 percent here and 20 percent there, and you hope the final calculation makes two people happy.

Marriages aren't the only relationships that work that way. I respect this silence of yours, envision it a period of metamorphosis, of making footprints in the sand.

Someday I'll hear your tales and be amazed.

Years later, Pat sent another card that offered this thought from anonymous fellow traveller:

"I wander through the galaxies ... and wonder ... will there come a time when the memories fade? ... don't let me come home a stranger. I can't stand to be a stranger."

Love, Sam

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