Well Bottom Blues

This is more of an obligation than a vacation. Brought to near the end of the road Fort Morgan Alabama, where the sea view features two oil platforms, to join in the celebration of my sister’s 50th wedding anniversary.

No room for us in the giant beach house they rented, they treated us to a condo just across a small salt marsh. But what we were not expecting is that they’re not moving into the house until Saturday and that we’re all in this condo together until then.

Their boisterously cheerful Midwestern Mormon greeting was not what I needed after 6 hours getting here through the horrific traffic on I-10, turning this into something like an evacation.* As soon as we unloaded we promptly mixed a cocktail. The entire condo is no smoking or vaping anywhere, including pool and balcony, but I’ve never paid attention to that since quitting cigarettes. However they are here and paid for the condo and so I have to slink off onto the balcony like a child with one of his father’s cigarettes

It’s 200 yatds to the beach but my sister rented a golf cart for her husband’s bad knee and so our our 78-year old eldest sister could get down to the shore. That will also help Patrice at 69 with their fibromyalgia and arthritis.

I love the beach but the vacation I had planned before this was announced was not to drag her to the beach where one must trudge a hundred yards, half through sand, to go to the bathroom. Instead we would go to Hot Springs Arkansas to escape the lowland heat and to take the waters with a daily massage. That’s what we were looking for when the irrefutable invitation came.

My brother-in-law Bill was about as sociable last night as I felt, staring at his game of solitaire on the computer while we talked and ate. I think he expended his entire ration of commanding presence during his years in the army, and now enjoys some quietude as do I. My sisters whose personalities are apples and kumwkats, picked up where they left off going back to a shared bedroom somewhere in the past, and sat up talking after we went to bed

Soon the entire prolific Mormon clan will descend on Saturday, children and grandchildren, all but my favorite nephew from that pack faithful members of the church. Mormons I learned long ago, when they brought me baked goods every time I published a notice of theirs in the newspaper, are some of the nicest people in the world.

I do not go to the beach for the company of family and a group picture all dressed in white one evening on the beach. I seek a bit of Bernard Moitissier’s splendid isolation before the trackless ocean, only sea birds for company, ignoring the stilted houses and high rises at my back.

Nothing to do but make the best of it. If I keep my gaze straight out to the Gulf the oil platforms are outside my peripheral vision. There will be sea birds wheeling overhead or wading just above the surf while I wait for the first dolphin to appear.

* For those not from New Orleans an evacation is why you try to turn your hurricane evacuation into something like a vacation. Once we fled to Memphis and of course we went to boring Beale Street and Elvis’s palatial ranch house.