LETTERS FROM HOME: THE FRIENDS WHO'VE SLIPLPED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH

June 18, 1998

Dear Carolyn,

Running into you at Riverfest and hugging you greedily reminded me that you are a base I always seem in need of touching.

Friendships measured in a sizable fraction of a century get beauty points just for lasting. But you're also the friend who has been counted on when my navigational equipment goes loopy and when everyone else seems a stranger.

You've been a source of unconditional love, always hard to come by outside one's own family. Sometimes you understand me when I don't understand myself.

We always seem to cross paths at one of life's crossroads.

I recall your pixieish haircut the day we met, seated next to each other in a psychology class, the van trips to Texas beaches and Southeast Missouri rivers, the late-night ruminations with coffee and cigarettes over the red-checked tablecloth in your kitchen.

Decaf is the drink now, and I gave up cigarettes many years ago. But it wasn't the caffeine or the nicotine that kept us up far into the night. We were trying to figure it all out.

On my way to California in 1978, I visited you at your new home on the reservation in Arizona. You showed me the wonders of Canyon De Chelly and Sedona, but the cold wind that blew those days in September said you figured to be in for a lonely time.

I still have the Navajo blanket you gave me, though it has been altered by canine teeth. And there's a picture in my head of smiling little children you taught the ways of the artist.

You came to Northern California when I was in love, and perhaps the way I was around you then made a lasting impression. You felt like an outsider and I didn't know how to change that. Maybe you just wanted to be in love, too.

When I drove through New Mexico on the way to New Orleans with a different woman, there you were again, now unhappily married.

You bought us a big ham you couldn't afford and tried to smile.

When I was the lonely one in California, you visited and we fought over your smoking. At breakfast at a restaurant, you sat in the smoking section and I sat in the nonsmoking section. This image of obstinancy is hilarious to me now.

When I moved back to Missouri, trips to Paducah to see you kept me from sinking into oblivion. Then you got upset when I ended a relationship with a woman you'd introduced to me. I did not know how to make it right.

Now we meet by accident instead of dropping by or searching together for something to do on a Saturday night.

A few years ago, DC's friend Tony from the Bay Area visited her here. He wasn't taken with the Missouri way of life, wondered why she would want to live "out here" and especially why anyone would go to a restaurant where food is served buffet-style.

He was most discriminating in every way.

I'm sure his outlook was the same when they'd known each other in California, but after he left for home DC decided she didn't want to continue their friendship. I guess she had changed.

Tony called and wrote a few times but soon got the idea. To her, it's as if he has slipped off the face of the earth. More obstinancy at work, I suspect.

I protest that he must feel hurt and abandoned. I have felt hurt and abandoned. I have hurt and abandoned.

Now, though we live only 70 miles apart, we seem separated mainly by our choices, by what we've figured out. I miss you.

Love, Sam

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