LETTERS FROM HOME: THE HALCYON DAYS OF ELEPHANTS AND THE DOORS IN THE NIGHT

Aug. 27, 1998

Dear Julie,

The cavernous blue sky and barely-fading warmth in Missouri at the end of August trigger in my brain old images of a bittersweet childhood passage -- summer's end and school's beginning.

In childhood, fear is exciting and the excitement of a new school year made treasures of those days when I can recall doing nothing more than watching "I Love Lucy" reruns and putting baseball cards on my bicycle spokes.

Some school years seem like that, too, an abyss of lost time, but those pictures have no such sunny coronas around them. Perhaps it's because something teachers want you to do is always far less exciting than anything you want to do.

Summer grants the freedom to do exactly as you like. It's important to know that freedom is always yours.

For me, the Doors' "Light My Fire" will always be associated with the feeling. A local band was playing it at the city swimming pool one summer night as I walked home from a baseball game. Kids my age were swimming and dancing, and the organ solo careened around the trees, wild and majestic and encoded with directions to the Promised Land. It was the moment when I understood why rock 'n' roll was invented.

DC joined the circus for a few minutes last weekend.

I took her there, not to help her run away but because she'd wanted to ride an elephant since childhood.

When DC found out this circus gave rides on Liz the Asian elephant, she spent a day planning the adventure. But she could find no adults with the same yearning waiting to be fulfilled. Her seventysomething father declined and she didn't even bother asking me.

If I didn't kayak out to hobnob with the whales off Maui, I guess, she doubted I'd ride an 8,000-pound elephant. Actually, I've always wanted to ride a Harley-Davidson, not an elephant.

No matter. DC was determined to make this a year in which she tangoed with the two largest animals on earth.

We were going out to dinner later, but she put on blue jean shorts and one of my well-worn T-shirts. "You don't dress nice to ride an elephant," she opined in a tone of voice of one who already was getting used to the idea of being a veteran elephant rider.

But on the way to the circus, the temperature in DC's feet started dropping.

"Do I really want to do this?" she asked. She did, of course, but the looming embarrassment of standing in the elephant ride line with 5-year-olds was starting to creep into her fantasy.

"You can pretend you're someone's mother," I suggested.

And she did. She picked up the little girl in front of her and placed her on the elephant saddle on Liz's back, whereupon DC and four little kids trundled about the elephant yard under the guidance of Liz' trainer.

He was a handsome young man with ripples on his bronzed stomach and a circle of barely teen-age female admirers. "Your first elephant ride?" he asked DC.

Yes, she admitted, then told him about the whales.

He congratulated her and said, "You'll never forget riding an elephant either."

The ride was short. Liz and the trainer had another show to put on. But DC looked happy. She lifted her adopted little girl off Liz's back and the girl nearly fell down the steps into her other mother's arms.

The elephant had a wonderfully comfortable gait was all DC said. Her eyes were beaming. She did mention something about wanting to go on a safari.

That Natalie Merchant song floats into my head now: "These are the days ... we'll remember."

Love, Sam

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