January 23

Early dark 4:50 Friday morning, January 23 and a low sky, totally in clouds. The porch rail is wet, telling that we had rain during the night. Oh, and 57°temperature, not bad for January 23rd here on the Florida Gulf Coast, though wicked cold is in the forecast for soon, a horrendous winter storm - - it'll be best to stay inside when that comes. 

The picture is unclear, that's looking southeast across St Andrews Bay, the lights at Tyndall AFB. 

My grandmother died on January 23, 1947, my first experience of the death of a loved one, and of the dull ache that was the smothering effect of grief that held on for weeks, months. I was eleven years old, my cousin Ann had just turned twelve, we were still close friends. Instead of my going back to camp that summer, our aunt Ruth took us to Washington, DC for a week or two visit with her sister, our aunt Evalyn. She took leave from her government job to entertain us and enjoy our visit. I remember all the monuments and memorials, the walk up into the Capitol dome, stopping for cold water at a spring fountain up on Blue Ridge Parkway, and the giant, black, hairy tarantula at the zoo.

I remember riding the streetcar from near my aunt's house to Glen Echo, a park that had a huge swimming pool, the first one I ever saw, and a high sliding board into the pool.

Her house was in a little neighborhood on the Maryland side; the property was a high lot that on the back yard side had a walkway partway down the woodsy bluff, to a little balcony, they called it "the terrace," that looked down through trees to the Potomac River.   

A keen memory is the Fourth of July on The Mall, our featured speakers, heroes from WW2, arrived in huge black Packard limousines, two five star officers, Fleet Admiral Halsey if I recall correctly, and Fleet Admiral Nimitz. A brilliant fireworks display, then there was rain as we left the celebration to head back for the car: my parents had bought me a new coat for the trip, had said I should take care of it, and I was upset about the coat getting wet, which my aunts thought was strange and remembered for years after. I suppose it would have told a psychiatrist or psychologist something about an eleven year old boy's anxieties. No matter - - my mother used to say that I "was born thirty-five years old."

That trip set lifetime memories. Ann and I were driven to Pensacola, where our aunt Ruth lived, we boarded the train at the L&N station, rode to Montgomery, went to a movie in an air conditioned theater while waiting for our next train, then rode overnight to Washington, DC. Same in reverse for our return trip. Coach from Pensacola to Montgomery, a Pullman Palace Car between Montgomery and Washington.

It was my second adventure to Washington, the memorials, climbing the Washington Monument, and the spider. Three or four years earlier, during World War Two, my mother and I had ridden the same itinerary up and back as we went to New London, Connecticut to visit my father at his officer school at Fort Trumble before he was deployed. In the U S Maritime Service, he served in a tanker plying the Gulf of Mexico. What do I remember about that trip? Me wearing a "Navy style" cap that my father gave me when we arrived, the three of us standing on a bridge over the Thames River watching a WW2 submarine glide past below us, a sailor on the deck looking up and saluting me. 

And also, late, dark night, waiting alone on the train platform with our luggage while Mama went inside the station to check something about our tickets. I don't remember where it was. The Time was summer 1943 or 1944, I was eight years old the night I waited on that train platform, so had to have been 1944, eh?

Gina, my sister's birthday is tomorrow, January 24. She was born in 1938 just two weeks after we moved from St Andrews to our new house in The Cove. She would have turned, what? eighty-eight. Exactly a year and six months apart, Gina and our brother Walt were a team. 

Tomorrow is also the fifteenth anniversary of my open heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic. What do I recall? Still dark early on a bitter cold day with snow on the ground, having ridden their trolley (a small bus) from our hotel to the heart center, now alone in an immense corridor, lying on a gurney outside my operating room, covered with warm blankets as I waiting while my OR was prepped and staffed, contemplating what I had lined up to dream while asleep under deep anesthesia. What I didn't know at the Time was that in that state there are no dreams, no dreaming, just nothing, not even darkness.

The medics there enthusiastically gave me ten years, it'll be fifteen years tomorrow, well past my warranty!

Life is Good. RSF&PTL

T90