LETTERS FROM HOME: SALVATION IN A GULLY AND ABOMINABLE CREATURES IN A RIVER

July 23, 1998

Dear Jay,

News arrives that a daughter named Mattie has made you a dad for the fifth time. Congratulations to you and Loree, whose saintliness has long been whispered among your friends and must now be proclaimed.

Fatherhood suits you as well in spite of your love for motorcycles, bloody sports and the occasional hopped up beverage. You will teach your children well one way or another.

My own view of parenthood has changed diametrically through my adulthood. At first the responsibility seemed overwhelming. How was someone seeking command of his own life to guide another who would first need to be shown how to walk and talk?

Now I realize that the gift of parenthood is an assurance of your own purpose. Now I think of these small beings as great treasures bequeathed on the fortunate.

If kids knew how much we love and marvel at them, how much we see ourselves in them, they would be appalled.

Helen Hunt made Jack Nicholson want to be a better man. Children make us want to be better adults.

The nieces and nephew from Cincinnati are in town this week along with my brother's daughter from Dexter. These are '90s little girls. Casey swims competitively, and Kim is a soccer demon and piano student who can play "Ode to Joy" much faster than Beethoven ever intended.

Carly is more well-rounded and maybe old-fashioned, a cheerleader who's never far from a book and writes letters to grownups.

Kyle, the oldest at 13, runs track and plays trumpet in the school jazz band. He also has new golf clubs.

His dad isn't a golfer so I feel some responsibility for introducing him to the rules and etiquette and, if you will, soulfulness of the game.

We played Bent Creek a few days ago. The temperature neared 100 and the flags were limp. Kyle doesn't hit for much distance yet but he's having none of the women's tees.

After a bad shot he stared into the sky for awhile, shouldered his bag and forlornly, slowly trudged toward his misbegotten ball. This is one of golf's great lessons, that you must play your mistakes.

You can mutter "Bad lie" after a muffed shot, and truly life on the course sometimes doesn't seem fair, but learning to hit out of a gully is your salvation.

Life will not be all fairways and greens, I want to tell my nephew. It's the rough, I tell myself, that makes you a better human being.

And don't try to blame a bad shot on an inexpensive ball, I told him. There will be bad shots but there are no excuses.

In Kyle I see a much more physically gifted version of my young self. I had new clubs at 13, too, but no one in my family knew how to use them and I lacked the belief that I could teach myself.

My purpose for learning to play golf later on in life now is only deepening.

We took the kids to the cabin on Castor River yesterday. Perhaps in part because they were a bit scared by the wildness, these city girls seemed thrilled to be in a real river. A hank of slimy underwater weed made them scream with delight that they'd encountered an abominable creature.

When Kyle caught a fish, my dad showed him how to remove the hook gently and set it free. Then he gave a girls a good-natured dunking.

When we pass along what we know of being alive, it looks a lot like love.

Love, Sam

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