LETTERS FROM HOME: BORN TO LOSE

March 10, 1994

Dear Melina,

We are looking forward to the opening of Garberville's newest restaurant, Cadillac Wok, which is located between a takeout burrito stand named Nacho Mama and Terra Nova, a used books-tattoo emporium. Seems an old luxury car body will be sitting on the roof of Cadillac Wok by opening day, by which time I'm sure the East meets West gestalt will coalesce.

The Cadillac was hardly necessary, since the town has no other ethnic restaurants with origins outside North America. I don't think they'll sell Cadillacs as well, but who knows? It's that kind of town.

Between the university and all the commercial theaters in Columbia, I suppose you're steeped in films. The single movie house here changes the bill once a week, which has made me appreciate movies even more. Was in a spin over "Shadowlands" last week.

DC and I were still talking about it when we joined a few other couples for a night out last Saturday. They talked about growing up in California, which I think is different from the Missouri experience. One woman said she stopped for gas in Big Sur one day and met Hunter S. Thompson, who said, "I want to shoot you with my love gun." Though her senses were surfing on a wave of acid, she declined.

One of the men described the jolt of returning from Vietnam, where his job was to shoot at people with a machine gun. He had trouble just watching people walk through the door of the plane that lifted him out of the jungle. He had been trained to fear and hurt people appearing suddenly in doorways. Eighteen hours later he was in San Francisco circa 1968, surrounded by people with flowers in their hair. He spent years living outdoors in his own reality.

He has sought normalcy through working as a school bus driver and postman, but a wariness pervades many of his reactions to many things.

Later, DC told me she could identify with him. After spending an hour or more scuba diving in the alien world of the ocean, relaxing her danger detectors often takes her the rest of the day. She says she even drives more defensively.

DC is uncomfortably skittish about the homeless people here, some of whom we know by name. One, a patient of hers, wounded her when he said people don't treat him like a human being. He walked miles into town in a cold rain because no one would pick him up, and with tears in his eyes told of begging for a quarter so he could dry out his coat at the Laundromat.

But last week one of the homeless people, who is an addict and mother of six, returned to the shelter -- it's in the basement of DC's clinic this month -- carrying the pipe she said she had just used to bludgeon another junkie to death. The shelter was immediately closed, and all the homeless people seem to have emigrated elsewhere. DC and I guess a lot of others -- including other homeless people -- wonder how far to trust people who are so anesthetized to pain.

I trust you are studying hard and are eager to see spring. It arrives a few weeks later in Columbia than in Cape Girardeau, but will be equally spectacular.

The jonquils already are blooming here. People say the homeless won't need an indoor place to sleep very much longer. Do you smile or cry about that?

In "Shadowlands" C.S. Lewis learns what the junkies haven't yet: That you can't really feel happiness unless you're willing to accept the pain that must accompany its loss. "That's the deal."

Love, Sam