happy birthday
Who knows where life and Time will take us! Yesterday was Joe's birthday, he was born at Baptist Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida on November 3, 1960. My memories are focused on the moment the physician came into the Fathers Waiting Room and said, "You have a son." A few minutes later, a nurse arrived to show me a newborn and unwrapped him to show me that he indeed was a big, healthy boy. A bit later, standing beside our car in the parking lot, looking across St John's River at a constantly changing Shell Oil display. Red, orange, yellow, the scallop shell growing and bursting into SHELL. I was 25 years old.
Then driving home in our car, the 1958 Opel Record two door sedan that I've pictured here now and then.
My mother was waiting at our house in Neptune Beach, a couple blocks off the Atlantic Ocean, with Malinda, two and a half years old. I told Malinda, "You have a baby brother!" To which she responded, "I know! And a sister!" Those were Times before the baby's sex was known ahead of birth, and we'd been telling Malinda that she was getting a baby sister or brother. She'd taken it to mean one of each.
Those were years of happiness both at home with two little ones, and with my young Navy career. The Navy had PCS'd us from my destroyer in Norfolk to Naval Station, Mayport. I was a lieutenant (junior grade) and it was the following month, December 1960, when we were home here in Panama City for Christmas. I was out walking with Malinda when Linda called me in to the telephone, saying my Navy boss was on the phone. He was calling to tell me that my name was on the selection list for O-3, Navy lieutenant, several hundred names below the selection zone. It was true, but the fact was that most of the officers in that space above me had left the Navy at the end of their three year commitment. So, it was a singular honor and recognition, but not as spectacular as it seemed to my boss; I did not enlighten him.
The Navy career brought adventures and travel, and my joy in it lasted through Naval War College, evaporating during the Vietnam War years with the sea duty that I despised and when I decided to retire ASAP, which was another seven years. But it's all good and for many reosons I would not change a thing, Navy or later, would not change one road taken where, Frost's, two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
Life is Time, and all we have of most of it is meomories.
It's all good.
++++++++
Big election that I mistakenly thought the early polls either would get it all wrong yet one more Time again, or would calm the blues to relax and stay home and scare the reds out to vote. I never mind being wrong.
One of many things that's interesting is that the main character said that if he had been running it would have been a landslide, and he really believes that; then blamed the losses on the red candidates themselves, then on the Iran War, then looking for a scapegoat, which I hope will play out. Years ago I worked with an Episcopal priest who was a front cover model of narcissistic personality disorder, a self-important little man who always had to find someone to blame, was totally, emotionally and mentally incapable of ever seeing any fault in himself. I will never forget the valuable life experience of that darkness.
++++++++
Opel Rekord. Three on the tree. $2.40 to fill the gas tank. That was one sweet car.
T91
pic: Joe's baptism at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City. Not long after he was born. I'm holding Joe. To my right is my father, Carroll Weller, to his right is my grandfather, AD Weller. Malinda is standing in front of us. Right corner, my first cousin Suellen Malone.