yet another Wednesday ramble
Spur of the moment yesterday, to our favorite and, at this age and Time, only remaining driving destination and second-best place in life. A seasonal thing because +!!+ Linda likes to gift shop there and to buy her own clothes there +!!+ it's still day-trip possible for us though at this age not much longer and we both know full well and acknowledge that each Time may be the Last and if that's the case it's okay +!!+ Bubba likes to eat oysters there best of anywhere even though yesterday's oysters at The Station were from Alabama not from Apalachicola Bay. They were excellent. Two dozen raw half-shell, cold and salty.
In life there are Places of the Heart, and Apalachicola is mine, one of mine, dating from the 1940s, 1950s, 1980s to the present!
Actually there is one other place I'd rather eat oysters and mullet: in Pensacola with my brother. But the drive is horrendous anymore, and the late afternoon drive through San Destin is deadly dangerous. But, no, and thank you and bless you, but we do not need a ride over and back, because, as I say, for everything in life there is a Last Time, usually one does not realize it as it happens, that Last Time drive has happened and we are okay with that.
The only thing is not being able to get our annual seasonal Rose Poinsettia at Celebrations then down the street a couple blocks for noon dinner with Walt and Judy!
Of endings and Last Times. Robert and I did our early morning walk in The Cove twice a week for years, maybe nearly ten years. As it turned out, the Last Time was just as covid was declared pandemic and potentially deadly, what, three years ago? Both of us doubtless thought we'd pick it up soon as covid was over, but that didn't happen, at least in part because Time marches on and neither of us can do it anymore! (I put the exclamation point there to tone it light not heavy, no condolences s'il vous plaît!)
Lesson for the day for those encountering elderly people. One of the discouraging things about life is when people try to avoid their own discomfort by saying things to us that they mean to be assuring but that actually minimize and dismiss my feelings, like, "oh that can happen to any of us" or "oh, we don't want to talk about that" or "oh, you'll be fine" &c ... just sayin' - - . If I trust you enough to share my feelings with you, let it happen!
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Not a downer. War is the downer. Hatreds in the world, hatreds born largely of fear of Other. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided. Because of Oct 7 I am on Israel's side, but my heart is with Khaled. Because of the hatreds, Israeli legal treatment of Palestinians is draconian. Hamas/Iran treatment of Jews is beyond the pale. Only children are innocent, and even they mature into the hatreds. "You've got to be carefully taught to hate" - - remember the song? "South Pacific," Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1949.
I remember a relative saying long ago, that interracial marriage would be a bad thing because eventually everyone would be Tan instead of White, Black or Brown. My view is that everyone being Tan would be a very good thing for humanity. After race, the next human issue to be tackled would be religion, religious certainty, the feeling that it's necessary to convert everybody else to one's own religion whatever it is, by faith or by force. After that? Maybe political divides, national borders and other walls. Robert Frost again and always: something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down.
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Commitments this morning. Time to stop.
RSF&PTL
T88&c