I looked up this morning and it is the end of August! Unbelievable!
One minute I’m relaxing, just lounging in the sun and thinking… about thinking… or a trip to somewhere to visit someone… or something,… the bathing suit is still new… the grass is still summer green…the sunburn is just beginning to turn to tan…
And then I look up… AND!…only days until work, traffic jams, short days, slush, and flu, covid, RSV vaccinations!
What any North Easterner, especially a retiree, knows is: the only way to extend August beyond 31 days is to move to Florida.
Which is what this savvy retiree did 10 years ago. In Florida, you don’t have to worry about winter, because winter in Florida is like the best of summer at the Jersey shore.
And you don’t have to worry about leaving your adult kids, because …Duh! Blue skies and pearly white beaches! You won’t be able to keep them away!
I found a warm, friendly Florida community. The people who sold me my house moved all of two houses away. They threw a neighborhood pizza party to introduce me to the neighborhood and I continued it as an almost monthly ritual.
Another neighbor, a congenial Conservative, and I would meet for dinner once every week or so and talk politics, with respect and even humor. We discussed policies, not personalities. And we agreed on basic issues more often than not.
And there was Cowboy Susan, a member of Mensa who was licensed to hunt alligators, a 100 ton boat captain who had climbed Mt. Everest, a Karate expert who fundraised for large charities as well as single, aging neighbors.
The pizzas were great; the sense of community was greater. and the kids visited…well, once or twice.
Then Trump hit the state like a hurricane on steroids. We still had the pizza parties, but conversations were reduced to golf, fishing, tourist traffic, and… golf, fishing, tourist traffic,..
Then the pandemic hit. No more visits from my kids. No more trips up north to see them.Then Governor DeSantis got into a snit with Disney over comments Disney employees made about him. Then came the banning of books (thousands and counting). Then came the rewriting of history to avoid making white students sad.
As the 2020 election neared, “Woke” became an all purpose insult. The few Biden signs in the community were plowed over by teenagers in a golf cart.
That’s when I began to wonder: Did perfect Florida weather justify living in a state that picked fights with one of its biggest money-makers, banned books, and rewrote American history?
I lived in a 1922 house that had survived multiple hurricanes, but would I survive continually rising insurance costs?
On the other hand…winter suntans were still cool, pizza parties were still fun, Mr. Congeniality and Cowboy Susan were still one-of-a kind friends. And there were always those blue skies and pearly white beaches…
But why didn’t the kids visit more often, once the pandemic ended?
And that’s when it occurred to me: They had lives of their own up North. They were too busy.
By the end of August this year, I had sold the 1922 house and returned north. Why? I tell people it was living in a DeSanitized state, but that is only partially true.