where the heart is
In the rectory kitchen with B&D early again though not quite as. Decent sleep on Avenue E which is US98, not quiet like 7H, and with streetlights lining the sidewalk not as dark. And instead of seventh floor gated security, being at ground level again on a well strolled sidewalk along the main east-west highway (there is no north-south highway here) recreates old homeowner unease and caution. Yet, old senses of being not a visitor but completely, comfortably back at home have returned to mind*. It’s existential somehow, though not quite internal crisis, and as if forty-eight again, or fifty-five and missing my daughter. Is she away at college? I can't stand it.
Wonderful surprise visit of an old friend, chorister and parishioner yesterday brought it all back, talk, reminiscences (both here the Apalachicola years together and going back nearly seventy years to when I was his counselor at Camp Weed), laughter, an invitation to supper for next week God, Irma and fate willing. Afterward, Linda and I went UTC for dinner, which for us is between and instead of lunch and supper, and riding around town while still holding on to the conversation and laughter made me feel that when I have to leave here again it will break my heart again, but what foolish nonsense. Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again even if only for a Thursday evening, a Friday, two dozen oysters, a Saturday, and a Sunday morning.
Thirty years ago I wanted, expected and intended to live here for the rest of my life; but wants, expectations and intentions either change or pave the way to hell don't they.
Ever wary of unreliable Hurricane Irma, our new expectation this Saturday predawn is to return home to PC, 7H and StAndrewsBay after church tomorrow because we were too confident and did not clear our porch before driving over here to Florida’s Best Kept Secret. Depending on Irma &c we shall return quickly.
Scroll down to picture below: one evening thirty years ago, a book club gathered in that house to hash over a volume and for a fine supper. During the conversation I sat on the floor leaning against a sofa, my plate of supper on the floor beside me, chatting and munching a delicious bite. Swallowing and glancing, I reached down to my plate for another morsel only to see that my supper was covered with huge roaches that some call palmetto bugs who evidently had converged from their shelter underneath the sofa. When I moved my hand, they all vanished back home under their sofa. No longer hungry, and never to embarrass the host, I pushed my loaded plate under the sofa so my new dinner companions could finish it at their ease. Our host of that evening is long moved away and the old house more than three decades downhill with new occupants who may or may not realize that they are not alone. My, our, empty plate may still be under the sofa.
DThos+ in tension between what was and what is.
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* - - except that Linda, now up and downstairs for coffee, just captured two centipedes racing across the floor of my old bathroom. She says we always had them here. I disremember such.