LETTERS FROM HOME: STORIES OF KINDNESS AND SPLASHING IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

July 22, 1999

Dear Julie,

On a sweltering night his week, we put Hank and Lucy in the back seat of the van and drove across the Mississippi River Bridge to Illinois. Bugs splashed against our windshield like rain and the air conditioner barely held back the heat.

It reminded me of the baked summer nights my parents would shepherd their family out of our unair-conditioned house into our unair-conditioned car for a drive with the windows rolled down to Popp's A&W Drive-In. The root beer came in mugs sized to the customer. Baby mugs were free. Nobody wanted a baby mug until they no longer were eligible for one and had begun to suspect that being a baby wasn't such a bad deal after all.

DC and I went to Illinois to see a woman she works with, a nurse who sat on her couch hemming her daughter's striped pants while she talked of her elderly uncle, a resident of an assisted living center.

Her uncle, she said, had taken to saving the disposable place mats that were under his plate at each meal. Perhaps feeling disposable himself, he hated to see them thrown away if they weren't soiled. He had accumulated a pile "this high" in his small room, she said, stretching her hands far apart.

So she decided to tell him a tiny white lie, that she knew of a Sunday school class that could use the place mats to draw on. He gladly gave her his place mats.

The next time she visited he had another big stack. That's because the other residents found out about the Sunday school class that needs their place mats and they all want to contribute.

The story reminds me of another about an elderly couple who ran a mom and pop cafe for many years in a little town near here. When the old woman's health deteriorated, business went bad, too.

Customers quit coming to the cafe because they didn't want to make her get up and wait on them.

There are so many peculiar ways to be kind.

The nurse's daughter is going to St. Louis tomorrow for surgery. She has a rare form of anemia. When her body produces damaged blood cells, her spleen attacks both her bad cells and her good ones. Her doctor thinks removing her spleen will help.

She has heard enough of blood cells and spleens. She ran to get pictures of her new boyfriend. He lives a hundred miles away, but wants to be a state trooper like her father was before he died. They share a love for "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns.

She is sweet, and every day performs physical feats as great as any Olympian's.

The nieces and nephew from Cincinnati were here briefly on their way to a vacation at their other grandmother's house in Arkansas. After dark, DC took the nieces to the courthouse fountain, a piece of public art topped by a statue of a Civil War soldier. They have a tradition of wading in the fountain and playing a splashy kind of tag until the headlights of a car approach. Then they pretend to be statues themselves until the car passes.

Hank and Lucy and I watch. I'm the one silently hoping each car that approaches isn't the police.

They returned from their vacation with stories about gargantuan meals of barbecued ribs and Mennonite rice and an infamous videotape of nephew Kyle, the lone boy partying with the 12 members of his cousin's girls softball team. Mutual attraction was evident. Arkansas girls are not shy.

Thank you, God, for girls who love fountains and "The Dukes of Hazzard" and uncles who save place mats.

Love, Sam