LETTERS FROM HOME: REMEMBER A SIMPLE SONG ABOUT LIFE AND LIMB

June 15, 1995

Dear Patty,

Sudden storms are common in these parts at this time of year. We had one in the early evening last week. DC and I were upstairs in our bedroom, trying to close a window against the horizontal rain when a big cottonwood limb crashed through two of the windows next to us. It was like being in a disaster movie.

We took that shattering sound as a sign to hightail it for the basement, which supposedly is the safest place to be in a tornado. Unless, I helpfully warned DC once there, you're standing below a heavy appliance when the house collapses.

That tragedy actually happened to a friend of my family's a long time ago.

While the wind howled, I stood in my underwear holding the flashlight I'd remembered to bring along. DC remembered the baby robin with the broken foot she's been caring for.

The wind and rain left as quickly as they came. No tornado was seen here though some were reported about. The bedroom looked like a drunken army had made a toast and smashed their glasses.

I said I was sorry to leave but disasters are news.

The next morning we discovered that the limb had smashed part of our tile roof, and that another limb had bombed DC's car.

It was like the infamous Black Knight scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": Limbs were everywhere. In some parts of town, whole trees were uprooted.

When Nature comes calling like that you're reminded about powers so much greater than ourselves, unfathomable powers that take and spare lives and keep us searching our holy books for rhyme and reason.

The robin died a few days later. One night it was chirping in its box, the next morning it was stiff. Someone suggested a calcium deficiency might have been to blame. Seems mother birds somehow impart calcium to their young, which our fishing worms couldn't do. DC cared for that little robin and I figured she'd cry when it flew away. Cry she did.

Last weekend was Riverfest, Cape Girardeau's biggest event of the year aside from the district fair. You would have liked the turtle race, which this year included a two-legged entry. That turtling must be a difficult life.

I liked everything except the P.A. announcer who kept trying to locate lost people while the country music star was performing. He didn't care for the interruptions either. Said, "This town's not big enough to get lost in."

Not true. Happens to DC and me all the time, even though we were born here. Lots of new streets were added while we were away.

The woods I roamed with my BB gun as a boy is now a soccer park. County lanes I parked on with girls are now landscaped subdivisions with $200,000 names.

I don't mind, though. Buddhism teaches that change is one of life's constants. Change and difficulty.

Resistance is ultimately futile and self-defeating. When I am resisting, wishing trees didn't fall on houses and baby robins didn't die, the darndest song sometimes pops into my head.

"Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream, Merrily merrily merrily merrily, Life is but a dream."

Love, Sam

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