LETTERS FROM HOME: THE CIRCLING SEARCH FOR A PLACE OF YOUR OWN

Nov. 23, 1995

Dear Adams family,

You must wonder at these once-a-year missives from the unfathomable Midwest. You know I will call to wish you happy Thanksgiving anyway, but the passage of another year deserves documentation.

When last we spoke, Arlene was hammering away at her writer's block, Patrick was watching a football game, Duke and Marylea had moved to San Francisco, Peter was waiting for his first movie to come out (It never made Cape Girardeau), Emily was getting work at the Times, John was happily in a relationship, Dominick had gotten married (whew), Tom and his beloved were blissful, Erin and Marky had split up, found new mates and were quad-parenting, Christine and Nick were about to celebrate Cole's 6-month birthday, and Angela was extolling the virtues of her new beau compared to the one she was happy with until she found out he was not divorced but was bankrupt.

My parents are fine. Semi-retirement seems to suit them. My mother has created a space in the backyard that looks suspiciously like a meditation garden, though she wouldn't call it that. It's rocks and a bench and a wind chime in an arrangement that is soothing. My dad seems to become less irascible with age. I wonder if the garden has anything to do with that.

My brother is in Nashville, flirting with the fickle mistress of country music. For every up there are 10 disappointments. It's a lot like golf, if slightly more serious. His daughter Casey likes school, clothes and country music -- a Phi Beta Kappa honky tonk angel.

My sister still lives in Cincinnati, where she teaches kids to roll up their mats and whatever else kindergarteners learn these days. Her own kindergartener, is almost computer literate, so whatever else must be quite a lot.

If this is the day to count your blessings, DC and I certainly will. Almost daily she finds some reason to say, "I love our house." Now she loves the fence going up to corral our new puppies and that the storm windows are in place for the winter. If the radiators don't turn into fountains, we'll be cozy.

We just had our third miscarriage. We know others who experience this as a great tragedy, and for DC pregnancy has become an emotional ride that is no amusement. But I look at it so: This soul wasn't prepared to be born. On this end, it's ready or not.

If we don't wind up parents we still will be fulfilled. I believe in that African proverb: It takes a village to raise a child. We live in a village with many children.

Those years I was alone in California and your family adopted me, I know now I longed for a kinship as spectacular and irreduceable as your own.

Like lots of my wandering friends, I wasn't sure that feeling of belonging was possible here with my own family. You never know what's yours for the having.

Slowly I've circumnavigated my place in the galaxy and the place I'll always have in my family. That place in a family is a blessing every one of us can count on.

Love, Sam

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