Watching Roman Holiday
$1 taco night with the girls
Getting straight A's this semester
Having a cat who is so in love with me (and Fancy Feast)
Having amazing parents (seriously the most patient people in the universe)
Having a bedroom I adore
Going to Florida for five days in December- spending my time sleeping by the pool, reading books for pleasure, having the t.v. room to myself like old times. I was trying to describe her t.v. room to Laura tonight. It's small with cream carpet, a small sofa. Windows to the outside- you can see her orange trees cast shadows on the wall in the dark- the neighbor's security light. The glass doors open to the illuminated pool on the screened-in lanai. The lanai features a swimming pool, a hot tub, a cushy lounge chair, and assorted sailor paraphernalia. Basically it is the home I wish to have someday. The air smells different down there, like an early September Richmond morning. I'll awake to coffee and eat Crispix cereal and read the newspaper outside. I will be visiting Thomas Edison's house and taking myself to the beach. Every time I visit down there it is an exercise in my own solitude. Last time both of my eardrums ruptured on the plane- I was in pain for five days, couldn't hear a thing, but managed to take myself everywhere in a sixty mile radius...in a gold convertible. There is a movie theater across the street.
Discovering my great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War for Tennessee. Wanting to learn more about that. I am preparing to interview my grandmother and my great aunts over Christmas to find out more about my dad's side of the family. One of my old timey distant relatives killed another by bashing him with a shovel...maybe that is a good indicator of the type of life my blood will bring. I'm not sure.
It pains me to know so little about my dad's side of the family. My grandmother was one of nine children brought up in Bristol, TN. When she was a teenager, she left home to move to Connecticut to live near one of her sisters and take a job. She fell in love with my grandfather and on her eighteenth birthday gave birth to my father. My grandparents settled in Rockville, MD after the war, lived in Ocean City, MD and managed a condo complex (Gullway) for a number of years, and eventually wound up in Cape Coral, Florida. My grandfather died within a year of their move, shortly after their visit during the birth of my premature brother. I remember my grandfather as a John Wayne type. Tall and quiet, always tan. He wore man jumpsuits convincingly, had sailor tattoos, and was always smoking.
Their life in Ocean City and the one they dreamed of in Cape Coral is the one I am trying to continue. After my grandfather's death, my grandmother dated a real schmuck, Richard. He was boozy and schmoozy, but fortunately talked her into buying a boat. We drove that boat all over the Gulf Coast when I was a child, going to lunch and taking advantage of the many ports the surrounding areas offered. I imagine now that he drank rum and cokes, or perhaps my grandfather did...even though he seemed like a whiskey man, through and through. I want to connect everything I do back to the lives of my two sets of grandparents, though I realize that must be impossible.
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