Wednesday Pensacola 1.1

Wednesday Pensacola 1.1

There is an American tradition that family members who have grown up, moved away and grown apart over the years and decades only get back together for weddings, critical hospital visits, and funerals; and I’ve found that to be so in my own extended family, all the more so as years go by. We cousins who were so close all our growing up years and learned to skate together don’t recognize each other with our stoop-over postures, paunches, gray, white and bald pates; and frankly we can be a shock to each other. 

But blood and old memories are thick and show up in time of catastrophic need. It is being so this week in Pensacola. Beloved cousins came through. Early this morning Linda and I headed for Panama City to top off on medicines, fresh socks and underwear and to move a cancelled birthday party weekend’s barbecue ribs and other things from refrigerator to freezer. Couple quarts milk and a few other chilled things. But clean shirts, pants, sweater that we forgot and left hanging on the door at 817 but no matter, family crisis helps clarify priorities and Life is Good when we all are alive.      

When we returned from Panama City, a chill bag of delicacies: Chicken salad and croissants. Pear broccoli walnut salad, Mediterranean pasta salad with abundance of favorite Greek olives, thank you, Suellen. Thank you, Carol-named-for-me, for visiting and stirring old family memories and secrets. Thank you, Michael for coming to meet us and with a box of incomparable chocolates. 

Malinda is at the promising for now stage of complaining that she wants to go home. For supper tonight I fed her a couple bites mashed potatoes. A bite vanilla custurd. A bite green beans. A bite beef hashed up but she choked on the second bite so meal was whisked away. When choke was remedied, she ate about ten teensy bites kiwi that Suellen brought.

Life is good: my child is alive. RSF&PTL. Amen.


Tom