Can do Condo

This morning we finish up one of the nicest gifts we remember, like the last chocolates in a Whitman's Sampler. October and November, we had the gracious kindness of a holiday vacation contemplation respite in a lovely 15th floor condo at Panama City Beach, the gift of dear friends. It was like living in the sky, and sometimes was in the clouds. Sunsets were unbelievable. One long night of a violent thunderstorm, it was like what I always thought the inside of a tornado must be like: continuous lightning and thunder, fearsome wind and driving rain. 

We used this gift of time and space in two ways. It was an opportunity to find out whether we are suited to condo living, which we found out is very much unlike regular life in a house, but we loved it, including the differences. Also, with our house listed for sale and numerous things that we wanted to do to help make it attractive to shoppers, including enhancing its curb appeal, we found ourselves completely exhausted at the end of every day for weeks on end, and happily jumping in the car late afternoon or early evening and driving out to the beach condo to spend the evening on the balcony with the sunset and a glass of wine, and overnight -- an incredible escape. Escape, relief, relax. We didn’t watch TV much, me not at all except a few college football games, but rested, enjoyed turning off the mind. It was unbelievable.

In all my years, until this happened I never appreciated the meaning of vacation. Vacation. In the Navy, annual leave meant packing the car, rushing home to Panama City for a few days, then rushing back to work. In the forties and fifties when I was growing up, friends and neighbors went on vacation once a year, usually a week or two each summer. We never did that in my family, in the household in which I grew up. It was always work, we were always working, my father owned his business, had employees, including me, and then including my brother too, and we couldn’t leave. So we never went on vacation. Once, it was the summer of 1950 -- as usual, I remember because of the cars involved -- we drove to Washington, DC and stayed with EG, our Aunt Evalyn, my father’s oldest sister, while my father attended a week long session at the College of Preachers. I wasn’t told until later, but he had been considering ordination as an Episcopal deacon. He changed his mind when he was told the education and training requirement, which would have been impossible with his business and probably was intimidating too. I’m thinking my brother and sister may not remember or even know that, though they may remember the trip, our one vacation all my growing up years.

The year was 1950, which I remember because we had two cars, and I thought we would be going in our Plymouth station wagon, a roomy car. But my father decided against it because it had a standard transmission and our trip would include driving in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and he felt the Fluid Drive transmission in our Dodge sedan would be better for one unaccustomed to mountain driving. So, our parents had the front seat and we three had the back seat, too close for peace. My recollection is that EG rode home with us, making three in front and three in back. It was the same 1948 Dodge that Linda and I had at UFla my senior year and our first six months of marriage. 

That 1950 trip was my second to Washington, DC, the first being the summer I was eight, during World War II, when mama and I went up on the train, leaving Gina and Walt with our grandparents in Pensacola. I felt very grown up and very much in charge. From WashDC we went on to New London, Connecticut to see my father, who was in an officer candidate school. There I remember watching a submarine glide under a bridge on its way to war. A sailor in the conning tower saw me on the bridge looking down, and saluted me, I thought because I was wearing an "officers hat" that my father had bought me that day. My parents laughed that the sailor saluted because he was nice and I was a little boy, but to this day I'm sure he thought I was a naval officer. That trip has been reassembled here in my blog at least once over the past four years, and may be again in time. I learned to love Washington that trip, partly because of the awesome visit to the Washington Zoo, called the National Zoological Gardens, where I saw my first tarantula, partly because of places such as the Jefferson Memorial, Smithsonian, and Glen Echo park where I swam in my first real swimming pool. I still love Washington, DC, including having loved living there twice on Navy tours of duty and again for a year right after Navy retirement. Washington is to love.

But the PCB condo. The owners call it “High Heaven” and it is that. If heaven is really a place and not just something the preachers made up to keep me coming to church, and if in that heaven there’s privacy and quiet and the sound of the wind and the sound of the sea, this is what heaven is like, and I’ve been. If I spend the rest of eternity in oblivion, no matter, because I’ve already been to heaven.

The close of the PCB condo story is that we liked condo living so much that we decided and have bought a condo of our own, closed on it Monday afternoon. We can be slow claiming it, marking it as our own, painting the area where we dislike the brash green colors, replacing some things, moving in as slowly as we wish while our house, very much too large for two people anymore, is listed for sale. We are having an exciting new adventure that we never expected at our age, that wouldn’t be happening but for the loving gift of letting us try out condo living for a couple of months. We are so grateful.

Our condo has the same view as the view from our house, but higher and better, St. Andrews Bay, looking south. Here’s off the porch our first night of ownership.

We are delighted. We give thanks. For friends and loved ones and for the wonder of life in creation.

TW