Driving Past The Past

Yesterday was an unexpectedly gorgeous Miami day. Usually it's pretty hot by now, but a cold front blew in Friday night, and we awoke to sunshine and 60s temps. After my typical crucial Saturday duties -- reading the Herald and drinking coffee, I roused Wifey from the couch and headed for a late lunch to LOL. Alas -- they close at 4 on Saturdays, so Gold China got our business -- mediocre food, unfortunately, but what are ya gonna do? Wifey felt like walking, and I'm easily suggestible. Her friend Jeannette was over the other night, and said she takes nightly walks in Indian Hammocks Park, in West Kendall. So I suggested we drive over there. On the way, I passed Wifey's old house -- in Kendale South. She moved there in high school, and we bought it from her parents after Andrew -- lived there from January '93 to March of '94. After that it became our first rental property -- first to a Baptist minister and his family, and next to a Chabad rabbi and his wife and young son. The latter tenants became close friends and brought us back, for better or worse, to our religion... The old 'hood looked fine -- Wifey's house had a new clay tile roof and fence. It sits on a canal, and the Ds used to love the neighbor on the other side daily feed the ducks. He was a baker, and brought all the left over bread for them. It was a daily scene -- ducks and other birds. The young Ds would giggle non stop... The park was lovely in the late afternoon sun. Wifey and I sat in a meadow and chatted about our lives, and the times we've shared. We talked a lot about my late mother -- the two year anniversary of her death is next month. My mother in law, herself 90, sent me a card with a blank check for $100. She wrote about how much she misses my mother, and that I should make a charitable gift in her memory, on this anniversary of her passing, or Yahrzeit. I was really moved by this -- so many people of advanced age retreat completely into their own worlds. My mother in law showed a lovely flash of the opposite. I'll see and thank her today. We left, and on the way home drove past the house we lived in from 1990 to 2000, except for the year and a half away due to Andrew reconstruction. We drove the street slowly, and recalled the colorful neighbors, and how their lives have changed. One fellow, an artist and UM art professor, recently divorced again -- he had already left the woman he lived with when we met. The house is in good shape -- better than when we owned it. The lady who bought it from us was the CEO of a local hospital, and she made it a real showplace for her business contacts. The clay numbers are still above the garage -- Wifey and I brought them back from our first trip to Italy in 1997. D1 still remembers her overprotective grandma accompanying her to the mailbox, even though D1 was 9... We came home and I watched basketball. I was sure Notre Dame was going to upset Kentucky. I was wrong, which shows why I don't bet on sports, or any paramutuals, for that matter. Lucky in the past, lucky in love, and unlucky at gambling...it could be worse.