Monday, isn't it.
Our son Joe is on his way down on his motorcycle, expecting to arrive about five or six o'clock this evening. From Louisville, Kentucky where he lives, he rode over to Apex, North Carolina to visit Lauren and Ashlee over the weekend, is to be here for a few days, Thursday to Tallahassee to visit TJCC, maybe go to the stadium to watch Charlotte and her trumpet practice with The Marching Chiefs (Go 'Noles) then head back north Friday morning.
Our plans for Joe's visit include a couple of nice meals, going to Pruitt to see Malinda, maybe eating out at a local seafood restaurant. Joe usually has liked to ride out to St Andrews State Park at The Pass just out of our sight from here the other side of Courtney Point, memories of Patty there. Sometimes he visits with an old friend from when they were at Gulf Coast College back in their twenties, Joe is sixty-three, turns sixty-four in November.
I remember the night he was born. We were living in Neptune Beach, I was stationed at the U S Naval Station, Mayport, the carrier basin at the mouth of St John's River, we had three aircraft carriers home-ported at Mayport, and, as I recall, twenty-four destroyers.
The pregnancy had not been a breeze, with one threat of miscarriage that had put Linda in bed for several days. When birth day arrived, we drove into Jacksonville to Baptist Hospital, also on St John's River. I remember the delivery physician coming in the fathers waiting room and telling me, "You have a son," which, having grown up taking care of and adoring little girl first cousins, I'd never expected. But sure enough, a nurse came in with the baby and showed me that, for sure, A Real Boy.
Boys, sons, can be something, you know, in some ways most memorably while they are teenagers and come home with your somewhat damaged brand new Chevrolet Camaro, a black Berlinetta with a red stripe and red piping on the seats. But I wander, Malinda actually crashed way more cars than Joe. I wander.
The evening of 3 November 1960, after meeting my Son, I went down and outside to the parking lot and stood by my car, staring at the endlessly repetitive Shell Oil neon sign flashing at me from across the River. SHELL. A scallop shell growing out in bright neon Shell Colors. SHELL. S-H-E-L-L. SHELL on the scallop shell. SHELL. S-H-E-L-L. Captivating, hypnotizing, burning into my brain a memory for a lifetime. Maybe I watched it an hour or more, then headed home out the highway to our house at Neptune Beach where, as I recall, my mother was taking care of Malinda, nearly two-and-a-half years old.
I remember arriving at the house and telling Malinda, "You have a baby brother!," and her response, "I know!! And a sister!!" We had prepped her to expect a sibling, a sister or a brother, not realizing that she was picking up that she was getting one of each.
It was November 1960, our car at the Time was an orange 1958 Opel Rekord two-door sedan that I loved. Maybe because it was from Germany, IDK. Shortly after, because I drove the Opel to work and back daily, we added a car so Linda would have one, used, a two-tone blue and gray 1956 Rambler station wagon. This was before all cars always had air condition and power steering and brakes, and power windows. An oddity of the Rambler was that to start it, instead of turning a key or pushing a button, you lifed the gearshift lever toward you.
But Joe. It's a nice Monday morning here on St Andrews Bay. Did you ever have a son with a motorcycle? If so, you know the anxiety here in 7H. I did see lightning in one of the clouds offshore over the Gulf of Mexico, but all that seems to have cleared away. Joe was to leave Apex at six this morning, Eastern Time, five Central. He said he'd text me each Time he stops for gas and a rest break.
Yesterday's NT reading was about the armor of God. In his Children's Time, our priest showed the kids his motorcycle helmet and the super padded protection in his motorcycle jacket. The kids seemed to like his story, but he was actually speaking to Uncle Bubba here.
Joe's love for motorcycles started when he was in high school in Pennsylvania. He used to be late coming home from school, and told me he'd stopped by the Honda dealership. I thought it was Honda cars. It wasn't, as he admitted to me many long years later.
Joe has had all sorts of motorcycles, Japanese, American, rebuilt a Harley that came in a basket and ended up looking showroom new, two or three Italian motorcycles, two or three German motorcycles. Seems to me lots of Harley-Davidson bikes, maybe mostly Harleys. At the moment, he's buzzing southward on a BMW bike.
+++++++++
Otherwise on my mind this week, starting this coming Sunday to lead Dr Dan's (for long years mine!) Sunday school class in a guided reading of "Apocaplysis Ioannnou" the Revelation of John. Here's a picture of one of the characters:
Oh, and RSF&PTL this morning,
T88&c
8:03 AM. Joe just texted us. First gas and rest break, about 190 miles out, maybe 150 miles out of Savannah.