Dear Diary Sat 10/15/2022
Xaipete &
Hebrew, "shalom" generally taken as "peace" but a range of glad senses and feelings, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquility, ultimately perhaps, to destroy the authority of chaos - - when messiah returns we will have this kind of peace on Earth.
What? on the wall, those two and a dozen or so more foreign language welcomes to folks at Yasou ("cheers"), the Greek style Mediterranean cafe in Tallahassee where Tass took us last evening before the football game. I had a bowl of their excellent chicken and lemon soup but brought a takeaway order of dolmades, rolled grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb, and had that and some of Linda's lamb on a skewer for breakfast this morning. And, yes, I would go there again and possibly even make it my go-to place if we lived in Tallahassee.
Which we considered before moving to 7H, and I considered again after H.Michael - - along with Apalachicola, which basically is as close to Heaven as I ever need to live.
Why we are here, why two or three months ago we booked a room for five mid-October nights at Wakulla Springs Lodge. Over the past seven years Caroline and Charlotte have played in Trojan marching band of Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, and except for when prevented by the covid pandemic we have come over for a football game, sitting in the stadium bleachers right next to the band and loving the blast! Actually, last year we didn't drive to Tallahassee, instead we went when Lincoln played Mosley at Tommy Oliver Stadium.
Anyway, this is why we are here. Caroline is a junior at FSU now, and Charlotte a senior at Lincoln, this year a drum major directing the band in the stadium stands and on the field for their half-time show.
So, this is sort of our celebratory grand finale high school football game, fall 2022, for me, exactly seventy seasons after I was a senior in the Bay High School "million dollar band" under R Orin Whitley, fall 1952.
Leaving the game, Tass drove us back down to Wakulla Springs Lodge, the door was unlocked, and the elevator even worked for us to get back up here to our second floor end of the hall delightful corner room. Bright and light this morning, was fifty-something degrees F outside when we woke up for coffee at five and six o'clock.
The weather is and has been absolutely perfect, I might say, "for us." Yesterday after breakfast in the Lodge dining room we walked down the path toward the waterfront, sat on a park bench under the trees and watched dozens of enormous birds circling in the deep blue sky overhead. Wandered around in the shop and bought a few things nobody needs except that I am grateful for the cane Linda bought me! Time in the room, a long nap, a cup of coffee for noonday meal, then down to the lobby to wait for Tass to pick us up.
Yesterday was a good day, a good better BEST day. As a retired priest friend used to say, "I'm having the best day of my life!"
RSF&PTL
T