Day Four

This is the bed Glen and I are sleeping on here at the Cabana House. I do believe it is a double bed and I realize that most couples used to sleep on double beds, mainly because that was the biggest mattress made, but I feel certain that given the choice, they might have opted for a Queen-sized. Or even King. 
That's really neither here nor there but the fact is, Glen Moon is absolutely too big for that bed and to make sure his legs and feet are entirely on the mattress, he needs to sleep in a sort of diagonal position and thank goodness that I can scootch over and somehow we are making it work. It's not torture, but we really will appreciate our bed at home all the more when we return. 

This is what the sky looked like this morning when we walked down to the house which may be for sale at some time in the near future. The possibility of that came up perhaps a year or so ago and we talked to the owners then. Our beloved landlord here (shall I start calling him by his name, which is Glenn?) told us about it as he knows the owners. 
But you know how life is and Roseland is at least a six hour drive from home for us and unless we spent half the year here, how could we justify such a purchase? 

And so much more. 

I have lusted after this house for my entire adulthood. I remember it well from when I was a child. It was "the Curtis house" and Mrs. Curtis lived there and it was the house catty-cornered across the street from Granddaddy and Granny's house, their property adjoining Mrs. Curtis's. It was a small-ish cottage, a cabin, a typical Florida home from when people were just really getting settled here on the river. 
So. You know. 

It is precious. 

There is also an addition to the left of what you see there which has two more bedrooms and a bathroom and a living area which are nice spaces, but nothing I'd get too excited about except for the fact that the family could come and stay. It's connected to the cottage by a screened-in porch/outdoor room/breezeway which is truly lovely. The place where I'd probablyspend most of my time if we lived there. 

Anyway, obviously we got to see it today. I texted the owners and told them we were in town and that if they hadn't sold the house we'd love to come and look at it. They were so very, very gracious and said, "Yes. Yes of course," and so we walked the perhaps a quarter of a mile down the white sand road from here. 

I was too shy to take any pictures but I did love it. Small- as houses were then for most people. One bedroom in the cottage, one bathroom, a tiny-ish kitchen, and a living area. There is a small pool which was sparkling and beautiful out back as well as a dock which needs a lot of work. It's quite close to the railroad bridge but not as close to the train tracks as the house we live in now.

Oh sigh. 

The owners are lovely people, wanting to move to Tallahassee, of all places, to be near family. They've lived in Roseland for many years and I know they will miss what they have here. 
They are obviously as liberal and left-leaning as we are. We didn't discuss politics but I could tell. And they are members of a Universal Unitarian Church and that says a lot. There were Jimmy Carter pictures on their refrigerator. And those solar panels? They power the charger for their electric vehicle. 

I saw an emerald green hummingbird in the firecracker plant you can see in the photo, and there are avocado trees, and a mango. 

Roseland. So very, very Roseland. 

On our walk home, we walked by the house that Granddaddy built for my mother and my brother in me around 1960 and it was horribly depressing. It is vacant and it was painted brown years ago, and the jungle has almost overtaken it. I knew no one was living there so I walked around to the back of the house and windows were boarded up and there was no way for me to see inside. I did not make my way through the jungle to part of the house where our bedrooms were. If there is one place in Roseland that feels malignant to me, that house is it. That's where we lived when the abuser came into our lives. 
I wondered if there had been meth making there. I thought about the terrazzo floors which I saw being made by men throwing small, colored stones into wet cement and then rolled over. I thought about the white stucco the house was coated in that seemed to have a glitter and a gleam to it. I thought about what it was like to be able to live in a brand new place with my mother and my brother and how many really terrible things happened while we were there. 
I do have some good memories of living in that house but I surely do have some hard ones. 

Here's a picture of the view from where we ate in Vero today on the shore of the Indian River. 

God, I do love a bridge. 

Brad the Beautiful came by to see us when we got home. 

I offered him some of the peanuts I'd bought on Glenn's recommendation for him. He seemed to have no interest. 

How can anything be this beautiful? 

About an hour later he was eating the peanuts after having pooped on the walkway in front of the cabana. 

Paradise. I am in paradise. 

The sky tonight. 

It is always magnificent. 

Love...Ms. Moon