Eastern coast of Florida

We're in Florida for a few days to stay with a great newish friend, in an oldish house in a part of Vero Beach, one of those long islands running off the east coast.  A relatively reasonable cost way to leave the Midwest for a few days, go someplace worthy, and, as it turns out, stumble into some of your greatest friends almost by accident. I guess Florida is now where most of our post-60 bunch goes, at least in winter, maybe more so than ever. Hmm.  A lifeplace I never thought I'd sign up for but man, now, dealing with medical stuff that is way off any previous-understood set of charts, maybe now I will, as least more than before, hang out in Florida.

Or not.  Who really knows where all this goes?  Me, least of all.

The trip here brings back strongly some old memory, of Fort Lauderdale and the lives my grandmother and uncle led there, with homes, water and boats, and the idea that  - 60-70 years ago - there could be a life there that differed from life in, say, Cleveland.  My grandmother, after brilliance in the Cleveland society of 1910's and '20's and loss and rescue in the '30's, lived her final years in a house on the water in Fort Lauderdale. Where I learned a lot in Spring visits, and in particular how to look out to the water that lead out to the ocean, and how that could mean future, not just that day.  Then my uncle, a fine-looking man with beautiful cars and boats, who went out of his way to live a fine-looking life which, as far as I could tell, he pretty well did.  Miss you, Uncle Greg, and the world, old Lauderdale, you lived in with residual class.