Mom moved to New Jersey yesterday.
Actually, I suppose she moved back to New Jersey, since she’d moved from New Jersey to Virginia in January 1979. And she stayed there while everybody else left: Main went back to NJ that summer, Rob moved to Atlanta in 1981 (but came back to VA in 1993), Dad moved to Minnesota in 1982 (but came back in 1992, I think it was), and I moved to MN in 82 but came back and move to GA in 95 but came back and now live in DC.
But anyway, Mom was waiting waiting for the closing on her house, but everything was out of the house except for some couch cushions on the floor on which she was sleeping. Her car was packed full of stuff, so she couldn’t like drive anywhere, like go shopping or anything, so she was just stuck there in the house waiting for closing. Finally she just signed her side of the settlement papers at the realtor’s house and left. The woman buying the house will sign when she signs, I guess.
Mom will be staying with Main and John and Erin until her house is ready in Florida. They’re still building it, seems like. She’ll move down there sometime this summer. I’ve never been to Florida, actually. Never been to the Land of the Mouse, which is where she’ll be near. I have no interest in the Land of the Mouse, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the Kennedy Space Center. They have a Saturn V there. Cool.
Ah, Edward, you’re missin’ out. I have only spent about two and a half days in Florida, but they were two and a half beautiful days. My wife and I drove down from Nashville to Hollywood, FL, near Tampa I think, to visit her grandma, who was then in her mid-90s. Unfortunately, some cretin broke into our house, so we had to rush back home.
Anyway, the thing of it is, the joy of watching the change in the flora and fauna during the trip. Heading through Georgia, the trees change; leafy trees become pines which eventually become palms. I saw dead armadillos along the road. They looked so prehistoric. I so hoped to see a live one. At one point I saw a huge snake cross the road in front of us. We got closer and found that it wasn’t a snake at all; it was a small gator, whipping his tail about as he ran. He came up out of a culvert, ran across the road and went back down the other side.
The sun was so warm; it seemed closer than the sun in Virginia. Maybe it was. The sea — was it a bay? I dunno — had a calming effect, and the flowers and trees gave off wonderful, foreign scents. Exotic birds flew overhead. A small heron hung out on the roof of Susan’s grandma’s retirement home.
And then, in the midst of my reverie, we got the call that the scoundrel ransacked our place. Isn’t that the way it goes?
Susan’s grandma is gone now, so I have no particular reason to head back down to Florida, but I have dreams of paddling through the Everglades someday before all of the water is diverted for agriculture.
Such a trip seems like it would be made for Adventurer Ed, he who, while visiting the Smokies, bathed in the dark, hiked down slippery rocks until his hands and feet bled, and hung upside down from the pull-up bars while smoking his cigarette. He’s still in there, isn’t he?