LETTERS FROM HOME: SETTLING INTO A HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

March 9, 1995

Dear Debbie,

Life here in Missouri is good and rich on its own terms. I remember when you came here to visit, the Mississippi wasn't as wide as you'd expected it would be and the weather was colder. I'm sorry if I was the source of those false expectations.

My wife DC and I have just moved into the house we bought. From the second floor, we can see -- and hear -- the tugboats pushing barges on the river. At night, their lights sometimes play on our bedroom window. One night, a train came through on the track alongside the Mississippi at the same time a barge was headed upriver. When that happens, the people in the bars on Water Street just look at each other, smile and sip.

This house is a marvel to us. Eighty years old, all stained-glass windows and wainscoting and built-in bookcases. It has, in the word of the woman who sold it to us, "character."

Also a ghost, we're told, but so far no spookiness. Aside from signing a mortgage that won't be paid off until we're in our dotage.

At this moment it has a dog, kidnapped from our former neighbor Margie for a few hours. Saying goodbye to Margie's dogs has been the hardest part of moving for DC.

She realizes they're farm dogs who'd be unhappy in town, yet just had to see how Lacey, the Rottweiler/hound dog would do. As always, Lacey just wanted to run free.

The house is in an area which has been the scene of some drug-related crime in the past. Lots of people advised us not to buy it. But on moving back to Cape Girardeau a few years ago, I used to walk around these same streets looking at the fine old houses. Sort of wishing and sort of planning for the future, I guess.

It's funny how things get set in motion. A few years ago I was interviewing a restaurateur for a story about the situation in this same area of town. He made the point that if you want something to change, the way to start having an effect is to become part of it. Not to run away and think of it as somebody else's problem.

As it turns out, he's the owner of the house we bought, and he and his wife still live half a block away.

I have done enough moving away from in my life.

Our parents helped us move in. To me it felt a bit like the barn-raising things the Amish do. My mom washed windows while DC's vacuumed paint chips. DC's dad took the kitchen faucet apart and glued the crack in the downstairs toilet seat while my dad helped lift the heavy furniture to the second floor.

There is something familiar and strange in all this. As adults both DC and I have kept at least an arm's length away from our parents. Physically it was more like 2,000 miles, but the psychic and emotional distance always was maintained as well. Some kind of survival mechanism was at work, perhaps long after it was needed.

I sense that need is diminished now. We're all just growing up, aren't we, no matter how old we are.

So you see, I finally have found what you must finally have realized was missing back then -- a place, some people, a life to call my own. A home.

Love, Sam

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