love, home, love

Haven't stepped outside on the porch yet, but pulling back the shade to glance around it, the street looks wet. Weather on my phone reads Panama City 63° Santa Rosa 59° about normal mid-January for us. But with a cloud and cute little snowflake under it, caption "Winter Storm Warning, WashingtonDC 29° snow this morning will taper off to light snow this afternoon," taking me back forty years and less and more in winter memories I love to visit.

One is a blizzard as I recall it, or maybe it was just continuous snow, dropping 25 inches on Northern Virginia to snow us in, was it 1978 or 1979, I'm trying to date by the car I was driving in parts of the memories, Buick coupe or Pontiac Firebird or Cadillac sedan or Chevy Camaro. 

Another, told here before, in my traveling days, changing planes between either San Francisco or Los Angeles where the weather had been beyond lovely, in O'Hare airport, standing at a window wall and gazing out into the night at driving snow and chill index 90° below zero. I appreciated the United Club that evening, but my recollection is the club closing about eleven or midnight and so spending that night snuggled down warm in a waiting room easy chair, covered by my heavy overcoat. Runways cleared, flight home to Harrisburg the next morning, then drive back down to WashingtonDC. Mario Lanza, "Golden Days."

Some five, six or seven years, don't remember for sure and not going to stop and reconstruct it, coming down from Pennsylvania to teach at the University of West Florida, burst of salt air as I walked out of the airport toward my rental car, and knowing the phrase "home is where the heart is" as I drove past the Welcome to Bay County sign east of where I am right now, and across the Phillips Inlet Bridge.

With seminary years mixed in toward the end of those years back and forth between Harrisburg and Washington before ordinations and moving to Apalachicola, then finally home to Panama City and my vow never again to live north of US98 or out of sight and smell of the salt sea. 

Epiphany: in early morning darkness, musing into dawn, comes to me that StAndrewsBay is my personal Luke 13:33 no matter what. ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω

Today is my Kristen's 26th birthday, stirring another round of memories, happiness and love. 

T