anon
Harbour Village is coming back together post Category 5 Hurricane Michael that ravished our community year before last. Our condo is back to better than okay except that twice when we had torrential rain for an entire day or so, water came up through the new vinyl flooring, starting in the kitchen and making its way, what? west, and emerging from under the flooring onto the concrete floor in the utility room. The HOA and contractor have been cooperative in trying to find the source of that, but so far have not identified it. So, it's a source of tension, anxiety for me, extreme high stress that at this age I do not need, stress that indeed was one of several reasons for selling my house and moving on into old age in a safe place. What I'm learning, I reckon, is that there's no hiding place from life as it is.
On the Park side, the Beck Avenue side, the scaffolding is down; though I didn't mind the Beck side scaffolding; for me, uneasy with heights, it was an extra layer between me and the pavement seven levels down. But on the Bay side the scaffolding - - well, I'll be glad when it too is gone. Except I'll miss the geometry lessons like visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
"Early Wednesday morning" was the promise, or threat, the contractor is to start work on the Bay side. Porch completely cleared of furniture and plants. Starting on our end of the complex of HV buildings, the contractor is to arrive, caulk the new sliders, tape and paper over the glass doors, paint the porch ceiling and walls, and finally let us know when they are satisfied and clear the space for us to resume using it.
Right now the porch is bare naked, and in the pitch black dark of thirty-degrees predawn, I got a picture of a ship passing just off 7H. Ship as a row of lights with her bow light and stern light, approaching the red-right-returning channel marker buoy a stone's throw off 7H. To her right, the flashing red light of the tower beyond Courtney Point, and a white dock light across along Magnolia Beach. Hopes, then, of life soon settling into its new normal.
Skeptical or even cynical, I've not been a fan of the stiff upper lip Panhandle Strong and 850-Strong movements that sprung up before Hurricane Micheal even cleared the border moving into Alabama that apocalyptic day. Back home since mid-August, we were over in the next county in hurrication exile for nearly a year, and many folks still are not back in their homes, or are "living in two rooms" as they wait for contractors to get to them. Many businesses have bounced back, many will not, though their shambles have been cleared for the most part. Landmarks are gone, especially trees, such that, driving, I no longer sense intuitively where the hell to turn. In some places land is still strewn with broken pine trees fallen in the same direction, a forest of triangles. Some nights, as last, the whole movie invades my dreams again and I wake up thinking "this is where I came in". Awake, I still must quickly steer my thoughts elsewhere before bitter emotional collapse sets in. If you are delighted with the way everything is now, then you didn't live here When, as I did starting in September 1935, or maybe this isn't your ... proudly stands our alma mater, as the years roll by ... I guess you had to be there.
Why is it? Everything that's even better than ever is not the same and never will be again in my lifetime. I'm not at all down, just reflecting this morning, and still not back yet. Anon, anon.
Meantime, conquer and prevail
T