59

Perspective: 59/41

Here in 7H, our bedroom is just adequately spacious that bed and tables with lamps fill 59%; in the Bay end, two chairs, angled but parallel. Facing 30° NE, she sees television with top corner of my chairback intruding in bottom corner of screen, chest of drawers, wall with paintings, door into the dining room. Facing 210° SW, my chair with bookshelves beside me, Annie & Jennie above and a photo of a Navy commander accepting retirement certificate from a long-dead admiral, faces sliding glass door, porch, railing, Shell Island, Courtney Point jutting out into St. Andrews Bay such that I can’t see the Pass. Even stretching, I can’t see Davis Point (just as well). Red and green channel marker lights flash at night, in the daytime boats speed or sail by, ships glide past. Above Shell Island, Gulf of Mexico and the horizon, clouds constantly change the sky and Bay. Picture above at dawn this morning. On the average, our view is above average. Sometimes spectacular.

Sky changes second by split second as clouds evolve shapes and with the rising sun’s continually moving angle on them. At some 31,536,000 seconds per year, if I stand outside watching and snapping sky- and seascapes all my lifetime, no two will be identical. Same with lifetimes, no two identical even with the same world passing by in the house or outside, at the breakfast table or on the way to Cove School: in a conversation as our mother lay dying, my sister once told me that growing up, she and I did not have the same mother. 

No two in a couple experience the same marriage either, beginning June 29, 1957, ours far different, early mine in the crypto-shack in a destroyer, hers alone back home with a tiny girl. Mine years later standing topside on a warship in Danang watching flashes and waiting for the thud as planes dive in, bomb targets on a mountain high above the harbor, and rise into the night sky; hers answering a knock on the door: grim policeman standing there gripping the hand of a boy, reporting that he and his friend were apprehended on a hill throwing rocks at trucks speeding by on the interstate. Later again, me in various pulpits, she in a pew in my line of sight, smiling and encouraging me even when I talk too long. We like all of life are memories, even shared years of love not the same. 

Today: 59 years. 

LP to CW 6-29-57