SAM BLACKWELL: MAKING SOMETHING OF A HOT WOK & COLD BIRDS

Jan. 30, 1997

Dear Leslie,

I awoke a few mornings ago wanting to add up the number of places I'd lived. Not towns and states but apartments and houses. That number, counting the four different homes my parents have had since my birth, is 32. Twenty-eight moves since age 20.

Friends complain about having to buy new address books because of me. I think you've complained.

At the time and even in hindsight, each move made sense, was necessitated by a change in circumstances, the desire to pursue a new relationship or to end one that had withered. OK, the inability to make a commitment. But also the desire for more fulfilling work, an adventure, independence, a period of isolation, a change of scenery, to deepen a bond.

You always seemed to be searching for something, Tom T. said when I quit his newspaper, leaving the Southern California beaches behind because I didn't belong there anymore. I belonged in Big Sur.

Thinking of the thousands of people whose lives have been changed there, I thank God and Michael Murphy. When the time came to leave Big Sur, the reserved man who ran the farm where I worked walked up, kissed me on the cheek and said seeing the change in me made him remember why he was there.

But that was just a setting of a new course. The changes and moves to be made over a lifetime are numberless. Changes that can be made every day -- especially in the ways we relate to other people -- if we're really paying attention to our lives.

Recognition of the ill will, willfulness and hatred that hide in the corners of our minds we don't like to claim. The rationalizations that pass for justifications for the hurt we cause, the unspoken demands we place on others to act and even think the way we want them to.

A tiny for instance: Last night, I arrived home for supper just as DC was taking the dogs for a walk. I thought about going with her but decided to change clothes instead. When she returned, she asked me to help carry her bird cages upstairs to the guest bedroom. She'd moved the birds to my parents' house for a few days while the house was sprayed to prevent roaches.

Sure I'll help, I said, but let's do it after we eat. I wanted start supper first because I had to return to work soon. OK, she said.

So I heated up the wok and she disappeared. After awhile I realized she must have carried the two heavy bird cages up the stairs by herself.

When DC returned, she said she'd wanted to get the birds upstairs where it was warmer quickly because she was afraid they might have gotten chilled in the cold. Her thinking: Since she rarely asks for my help, I'd get the message that taking the birds upstairs immediately was important to her.

I hadn't received that message at all, I told her. And now felt guilty, not just for the birds but for all the other things she hasn't been asking me to help with.

My thinking: I don't like coming home for supper and spending half the hour preparing food and the other half gobbling it down. I want a calmer experience.

Deeper down in the part of my psyche that hasn't grown up, I'll admit that I want to be taken care of before the dogs and the birds are. Even deeper down, want her to do what I want.

It's up to the part of me that is mature to recognize what's going on, in the belief that making the unconscious conscious can purify these attitudes.

I'm no marital expert, but I've a feeling that these are the small misunderstandings that harden into resentments over time and foster a sense of separation instead of the unity all of us are searching for.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.