good, better, best

Okay, it's Tuesday morning and not so early as usual today, but I'm good and here we go. I'm good. Not saintly, surely not sinless, but good as in good, better, best. On that same scale I'm a good man, a good person, a good husband, a good teacher, a good priest, a good preacher, I was a better Navy officer, I'm a good driver, I have good judgment; as my crumbling portrait shows, I was once a good looking man, and Linda says that for an octogenarian I'm cute. I think I've been a better father, dad, papa, but in other parts of life I'm mostly good. Just so today.

What I mean, though, in now saying I'm good is that this morning for a change I'm thinking that I'll make it after all, especially based on yesterday, and good is a giant step forward as hurricane emotions wear on. Mind, it's hardly today yet, so who knows what I'll be, good or bad worse worst, by noon, never mind tomorrow, but for the moment, looking good.

Yesterday in 7H so the insurance adjuster could have a look, was surprisingly uplifting for my spirits instead of as usual being so depressing that I wanted to jump out the damn window (it's okay, the windows don't open, at least, I can't get them to open, and I'm sure as hell not jumping off the porch, it's too high). It may be way, way, months too early, but in 7H yesterday I visualized the new flooring that we've selected, new window treatments, new arrangement for our furniture and paintings, and suddenly 7H began to feel it might be home again after all, at least the promise and a glimmer of hope, and that's good.

Taking a picture of the living room windows with beloved Bay outside didn't hurt either.

Not going with the downside, that the water still isn't back on in 7H, but it seems that there's not a broken pipe in the laundry as first seemed and was reported to us, but only that a valve doesn't completely shut off and so leaks, sprays water into the space (it's a space at the moment, not a room), studded for drywall &c but not again a room yet).
.

All I need to do is go to Whitehead Plumbing, buy a cap and some thread seal tape and cap it off until the laundry sink is reinstalled in there; and then, having stopped the leak, I can turn the water back on. So it's all good.

As for the rest of it, I don't have to put the insulation back in, I don't have to install the drywall, I don't have to reinstall the toilet that's on the porch, or the bathroom sink, I don't have to reinstall the washer and dryer, I don't have to rehang the doors that were taken down, I don't have to paint the place, I don't have to rehang the ceiling lights, I don't have to install the new flooring, I don't have to uncover and put the furniture back where it was. Emotionally I do have to let everything go that was but that is now not and never will be again, and that's major, monumental, but I would and will have to do that, adjust to the change, no matter what.

So here's what I'm thinking of to recollect as a memory to show me that I can handle this. A generation ago, well by now it was two generations back, wasn't it, when the Episcopal Church admiralty, high commission and general staff so changed and revised and remodeled the church, not the building but the church itself, that everything felt different because they'd left nothing the same and had even revised what was supposed to "seem" the same as a sop to us traditionalist old-timers, revised it just enough to make even the sop infuriating, many people were distraught, many people left to form a more or less "continuing church." I was one of the distraught ones, as was my father; and we discussed it at unending length. My bent was to leave and go with one of the several "continuing" movements, and in fact I did leave for a short time, a year or less, while we lived in Pennsylvania. But, in his sixties, while I was in my forties, my father was a wiser man than I. Thinking to leave and join a new church, my father told me, "I decided that if I was going to join a new church it might as well be my own church, the new Episcopal Church." That's about when I came back and shortly afterward started the path to seminary and ordination.

If I can live my life postHurricaneMichael as happy as I am being an Episcopalian, I can live my life happy again in the new 7H and new StAndrews, Panama City, Bay County. And from where I stood looking out, what I saw and love, StAndrewsBay, doesn't seem to have changed at all. So, at least for this morning, I'm good.

While in Panama City yesterday, on advice of HOA, I went to the old downtown main post office and got a P.O.Box. Six months, to give time for Harbour Village to be restored and made better than new, which is the promise. Thought of stopping for lunch of a couple dozen halfshell oysters on the way back, but didn't. Next time then.