Usually this phenomenon takes place over the roughly three months of a Florida summer, but in my case it happened over the three fall months during which we were traveling through Europe, Thailand, and Bali, in a great, post-retirement blowout of a trip.
Returning from the delights of Prague and Amsterdam, the ice-blue weirdness of Iceland, and the disco-ball mania of Kuta, Bali, and Pattaya Beach, Thailand, to the Gulf Coast of Florida is both culture shock and comfort.
When we first pulled into the driveway, our yard looked somehow diminished, like a childhood home that isn't as grand or as spacious as you'd remembered. (A week later, it has improved a great deal.)
I have forgotten the names of every other neighbor, but not of their dogs. I have to ask their neighbors what their names are, lest I be shamed. "Oh, that's okay," they tell me. "They've probably forgotten yours by now and think you're just a snowbird."
Really, though, not a lot changes during three months in Port Charlotte.
Any "For Sale" signs that have come down have been replaced by others sprouting up on different properties.
One barn of a place around the corner--a concrete edifice with its interior still one vast hall undivided by rooms--is under such painfully slow construction that its owners accomplish only one perceptible change per year. Last year, it was windows. This year, instead of a large board, there is an honest-to-God double door. It is held in place by what look like giant black staples. Perhaps real hinges will appear next year.
Half the neighbors wave "how are ya" as if I haven't been gone. Others accost me with, "We didn't know what happened to you! We didn't see you any more!" Then, more darkly, "And you never do know, do you?"
"No, you never do!" I reply. "And by the way, has anybody died or become critically impaired since we've been gone?"
Others had more faith. "We thought you were probably okay because your articles were still showing up in the paper."
Little did they know. I could have been taken into white slavery in Denpasar. I had banked a dozen articles to fill the deadlines when I was gone, and no one would have been the wiser.
And a few things exhibit shocking change when you are gone that long.
A dozen new restaurants have opened their doors--which may well be closed by this time next year.
Shorn of the dense shrubbery that had always hid it from view, one house has become so unrecognizable that I thought it had been torn down and replaced, whole. It seems bigger and farther forward on its lot without all those bushes pushing it into the background. They say that its ceiling is caving in and its floors have rotted. And suddenly it stands exposed to view like an embarrassed elderly hospital patient whose johnny won't fasten.
The dogs' old nemesis, a fat grey squirrel, still taunts them by climbing atop the pool cage and frisking his tail. But now he has gone too far and peed down on their heads as they barked.
 |
| "Roly, I can't believe he did that!" "No, Doxie, it's true. This is his stinky squirrel piss all right." |
Many neighbors no longer wave when they pass me in their cars. They are no doubt new and don't know me yet, but they will before long.
