LETTERS FROM HOME: PICTURES OF CHILDREN WE COULD NEVER FORGET

May 17, 2001

Dear Karin, John, Inga and Christien,

It has been a long time since I last wrote, but we have not forgotten you. If anything, we hold fast to that year in Garberville more each day.

The bulletin board on the wall by my desk at home is a haven for photographs and scraps of paper that are important to me. There's the phone number for the golf course, a birthday card from DC that moved me, a photograph I took in Monument Valley, and a publicity photo of Van Morrison wearing shades. Most of the other photographs are of children -- nieces and nephews and the daughters and sons of friends.

There's one photograph of the six of us on your deck. I am wearing a Southern Humboldt T-shirt, John is in a football jersey with the sleeves cut off, and DC has on a sweatshirt. Only Karin in a flowered dress is presentable. DC and I are holding Christien. He is looking at the camera and doesn't appear to be squirming too much. Karin is holding Inga on her lap, and Inga is wearing that I've-got-a-secret smile of hers and seems to be enthralled with her fingers.

Above that picture is a snapshot of Inga and Christien holding hands. Seven years later, I don't suppose they willingly do that anymore.

Inga was 3 and Christien was 2 when we took them to see "The Lion King." They surely don't remember, but we do.

In that year of miscarriages, Inga and Christien lifted our spirits and showed us how golden children are. In the way you treasured them, you taught us that each one is a sacred gift that no one ever should take for granted. Those who abuse children in any way incur the greatest of karmic debts, I am convinced. Those who love and teach and come to their aid gleam with the greatest honor.

If Mother's Day is difficult for people whose mothers have died, it's no fun for women motherhood has eluded either. DC tries to hide this sadness at these times but her chin drops, like a child's whose feelings are hurt.

It is a hurt our dogs, Hank and Lucy, are some balm for.

I try to imagine how all of you look and how you are now. Do Inga and Christien play ball? I ask because John is not good at ball sports, the better to live in Southern California.

We know you're happier there, closer to your parents, out of the rain and in the sun.

We are planning a tour of California this summer, and you're on it. We want to see redwoods again and rolling blackouts, eat cheese and grapes at Nepenthe, overheat the rental car on the Grapevine Pass, breathe some air you can see, eat Mexican food every day and most of all to look into the eyes of our California friends. There are eyes up and down the state, in Arcata and Garberville, Oakland and San Francisco, Long Beach and Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar and San Diego.

When I was a kid, I imagined that everyone either spent the day on "The Price is Right" or "American Bandstand," depending on the day of the week. When I lived there, I found out I hadn't been that far wrong. It seemed a land of perpetual teen-agerhood where no one turned gray and most everyone was looking to score in every way possible. I couldn't make it out.

And yet, some of the most tender hearts I've come across were at home in Southern California. It is your home just as Missouri is ours, the place you understand and are understood.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.