LETTERS FROM HOME: WHEN NOTHING NEEDS TO BE ADDED OR NEEDS TO BE TAKEN AWAY

May 6, 1999

Warren Beatty to Dustin Hoffman in "Ishtar": "To be this old and have nothing takes a lot of nerve."

Dear Julie,

A moment comes every spring when I want to yell, "Stop. This is perfect." The sky is a blue that sucks the air from your lungs, the temperature so ideal you feel weightless, floating in a sea of green over a rainbow of blossoms. Nothing needs to be added, nothing taken away.

Perfect moments keep their own time.

Sorrow comes when we cannot stop perfect from becoming something else. But there is a perfect in July, too, when your body is so charged with sunshine that a dunk in a river or lake or ocean is the only recourse, and in October, too, when a northerly breeze stirs the few leaves still hanging on to summer, and in January or February, when snow falls overnight and you awaken to a scene so wild and elemental it surely exists in the dreams of equatorial tribes as well.

You can't hold onto perfection. It slips away as surreptitiously as it came upon you. You weren't paying attention and suddenly, in a chord change or on a page or in a kiss, it appeared.

It's helpful to me to look at life the same way, to remember the moments from youth when all was perfect but to accept that youth cannot be held onto, to exult in the freedom of the summers but remember that taking responsibility is the counterweight.

The vicissitudes of growing older are the part of life DC and I are engaged in now. Maybe out of denial, none of us ever thinks we'll wake up some day and realize we're almost 50 years old.

But here it is, the new perfection. Our bodies don't work quite the same as they did 30 years ago, and we'd have to admit the same of our minds. But then they were supercharged with hormones and Coca-Cola. Now they are nourished with low-fat yogurt and decaffeinated coffee. More maintenance is required.

Now we know much better the joys our minds and bodies are capable of experiencing and appreciate the gift from God having any mind and any body is.

Now, peeking over the proverbial hill, we can see what it might be like to be 60 and 70 and 80 and, like my grandma, 92.

I am convinced of a reason for each age. An understanding is to be gleaned from one that was not possible in another. A fuller appreciation of spring, for instance. At 20 we are asleep to the perfection. At nearing 50 we remain asleep to our own detriment.

Old friends die now, and time once endless now is hard to find enough of. I am less willing to spend time doing things that don't engage me. I am less able to tolerate the noise of life and more interested in listening to its song. What is my life singing to me? I ask.

DC fears not getting everything done she wants to do. I fear not getting right the one thing I want to get right -- her and me.

Not every day takes your breath away, not every moment surrenders its meaning. The assignment is to seek out the perfection in each moment. It's there, waiting.

Love, Sam