Tally-Ho

Lights: the Christmas tree is on, navigation lights are flashing on the Bay in front of me, including the red flashing light on the wrecked shrimp boat just outside my front window here in 7H. In the window, the reflection of the dim kitchen light behind me, and the coffee percolator's red light that'll go out in a few minutes. So lights, but more thoughts, a better word, realizations, things I notice as, with no order or apparent connection, they pass through the mind.

All my eyeglasses are prescription, and I have two different prescriptions, one for reading, which I picked up and am wearing right now and they're not quite right for using the laptop in front of me; the other prescription is for pulpit, altar and computer distance; both prescriptions are perfect for their intended use. Because I lose track of things, five pairs of these eyeglasses, two "reading" and two "computer &c" so somehow I always know where there's a pair or two, unlike my phone, which in aging I seem to have taken to leaving here and there and losing track of; but I've trained myself to not be (not to be) frustrated about it when it happens: if you ring and I don't answer it's because my phone is either turned off, or you're not on my contacts list, or I've forgotten and left it somewhere - - most likely but not necessarily in my chair at church across town.

Sunday mornings I turn my phone off before church and never think to turn it on again until Tuesday or Wednesday; though yesterday I forgot to turn it off, and it rang just as the Prayers of the People started during the ten-thirty worship service. mea culpa

It's way too early to have risen, to be up to stay, 2:11 or such, with the knee-jerk sleep and nap practices that I've drifted into, I've got my circadian rhythm totally out of synch with the world around me and its daily life cycle, is it a health issue, does it matter? IDK, it doesn't really bother me at all here in my chair with a cup of hot & black coffee, my first from the coffee club coffee labeled "Sisters" and French Roast that arrived timely, just as I spooned into the filter the last of November's shipment.

So, sitting here in my living room chair, but facing the window this morning because a team is scheduled to arrive at nine o'clock to resume work on correcting the water leak that developed during Hurricane Michael and drips water into 7H: all the furniture, my chair, my lamp, the black oriental nesting tables, the pots of plants with red blossoms, and one of the wrought iron chairs, we moved yesterday afternoon in prep for this morning. The water leak is from something on the outside porch of the penthouse unit above us broke loose in the hurricane wind, and it's been a four-year and longer challenge for the HOA to identify the exact source.

Mind still drifting - - we like familiar things around us that say "home" so all this stuff is from our lives. My chair, its upholstery long grown shabby but loved all the more like the Velveteen Rabbit, is from Linda's parents' house when we were teenagers; same with the nest of four elaborately carved black oriental tables, as is the heavy wrought iron furniture. My lamp is a short chair-side floor lamp with two bulbs, that we bought at a little antique shop in Lanark Village early in our Camelot Years in Apalachicola.

Short floor lamps with two lightbulbs are quite handy for reading; we bought two those years, the other one I rescued from Malinda's ruined house after the hurricane, and it was in her "sitting room" in her little suite at Ray & Britany's house in Breakfast Point. They've sold that house and are in a relocating process.

The wrought iron furniture is from the "solarium" - - modern term "family room" in the same, Linda's home on Bunkers Cove Road when we started dating the fall of 1952 when we were in high school. What else can I say? It's a Florida warm late fall yea unto early winter moment in the middle of December 2022, seventy years later and here we are. Where, how and why did we start? Well, it just happened as a natural flow of life events. All of us from Cove School, all in Bay High, all members of the Sunday evening youth group at St Andrew's Episcopal Church, Linda's boyfriend, my best friend and freshman year college roommate Philip had a new girlfriend, my girlfriend lived three-hundred miles away - - my junior and senior years I was the Sunday evening driver, picked up everyone at home, six or eight or sometimes nine or ten of us in our brown Plymouth station wagon (this was years before seatbelts), and delivered everyone home afterward. Afterward was always sort of a "dating" Time, riding around, or going to Jimmy's or the Chicken Box on Highway 98 in Little Dothan, or the Tally Ho - - the only drive in that's still here, on Harrison Avenue a few blocks north of Bay High, at 15th Street and Highway 231.

"On our city's northern border, reared against the sky, proudly stands our alma mater as the years roll by." Lots of firsts and beginnings for me those years after Cove School 1941-1949; Bay High fall 1949 through spring 1953.

Anyway, when our fall 1952 season of church youth group started, Linda moved from the middle seat by Philip to the front seat, and I started making sure there was a third passenger in the front seat, by the window, so Linda had to sit by me. If you watch a flower bloom, maybe it was sort of like that, just perfectly natural. To my recollection, our first real "date" was for the Bay High Christmas Ball about this Time of the Season in December 1952, seventy years ago. Life Happens, doesn't it.

Sitting in my chair, facing the Bay windows, leaning back against a dark blue pillow with red piping that Malinda gave me one Christmas a dozen or twenty years ago, my legs and lap covered with a blanket that Tass made for me another Christmas years ago.

Today's schedule. The workers figuring out and correcting the water leak from above into 7H. My car at Cramer's to repair a flashing light "service seat belt" problem prep to giving it to Joe so he can drive it to its new home with him in Louisville when he returns there after being here for Christmas.

Me? I'm inheriting the 2013 Volvo XC60 we bought new for Kristen after her car crash in February 2013 in Atlanta, while she was at Emory Oxford.

hail to thee, our alma mater, hail, Bay High, all hail.

Life happens whether you are there or not, ready or not.

RSF&PTL