Mysteries above and below

Nov. 1, 2007

Dear Julie,

At intermission of "Big River," the first production at Cape Girardeau's inspiring new performing arts center, DC said she'd felt herself getting sleepy during the first act. "I don't like the plot," she explained.

I pointed out that the plot she didn't like is the plot of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," one of the great American novels. The pedigree didn't matter to DC.

The plot wasn't the real problem anyway. My wife is sleep deprived. Monday she began work at 8 a.m. and finished sometime Tuesday morning in a city an hour's drive from home. On nights she does go to sleep at a reasonable hour she often awakes around 3 a.m. and goes to her office to finish paperwork or water plants.

I am partially responsible for this behavior. Earlier in our marriage DC often turned on the TV in our bedroom when she woke up after midnight. I argued that early morning TV might be damaging to my subconscious mind, that when asleep all those messages go into your head unfiltered, and questioned whether it's a good idea to have Ron Popeil and his rotisserie ovens showing up in anyone's dreams.

Having a potentially deranged husband seemed to concern her.

If DC is an insomniac, as her sleep patterns suggest to me, the reason is obvious. She worries. About all things, big and small. Global warming and burned out street lights, her patients and drafts in the house, an economic depression and people who swear in public, drug dealers and balky computer programs, George W. Bush talking about World War III and the whiskers I occasionally leave in the sink, Hank and Lucy's advancing age and the big gaps between floats in our local parades.

I think it worries her if she doesn't have something to worry about.

I'm used to being around the worrisome. My mother is just like DC. If there's nothing important to worry about, she will agonize over the Cardinals' pitching staff. Don't worry, Mom, her children reassure her. She will anyway.

The trouble is, worrying produces nothing but tension and strain. Has worrying about something for a minute or an hour or a year ever changed anything for anyone?

My preference is the opposite of worrying -- to be assured. To know in your heart that nothing is wrong but that each of us is on the way to perfecting ourselves.

"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles," Mark Twain said, "but most of them never happened."

None of us knows the answers to the great mysteries of love and life, so set your mind at rest.

Be like Huck and Jim on a raft floating down the Mississippi River into the mystery below. "It's lovely to live on a raft," says Huck. "We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."

What we mistake for worry is just the yearning to discover the secrets of the stars and where the river will take us.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.