A brief one this morning, with a fee hearing set to start in just a little while. I loathe this motion, and the in-your-eye spewing of invective from opposing counsel in the case we lost at trial in August. The world's changing. People are just shittier.
For instance, last Friday I was on the phone with a former partner, now opposing counsel in a fight in which I represent a subcontractor who came over from Louisiana to do work surveying the damage after Hurricane Michael. At issue, in part, is the fact that this sub left the local jurisdiction that was paying for the work, my folks say at the direction of the general contractor who's now stiffing us. I asked why my client would be in the next county doing work but for the instructions of his client, especially given that this was our only job in the panhandle at the time.
"Mike, you just don't get it. While you were over there in south Walton sipping lattes in Blue Mountain Beach, we were living in total chaos over here. Things just happened. Folks were running around all over the place."
This really set me off, the whole latte sipping thing. His home wasn't destroyed--he played with a chain saw cutting branches for a couple days, ran his generator, cooked out on the grill until the kitchen was back up and running. Peg and I lost our homes, and lived in three different places in the space of a few weeks. You want chaos? Let me tell you what that's like, crawling through wreckage rescuing water ruined clothes and mementoes and whatever else we could save, with no idea how I'd make a living.
I digress.
Today's the fourth anniversary of the very bad day, the day everything was destroyed while I sat at the Ritz Carlton Amelia Island watching it all on TV while attending a Board of Governors meeting.
I snapped this photo from what was then Peg's condo on October 8th, after taking a video inventory of the contents and closing the door for the last time.
I remember it was a beautiful fall day, as it always is the day before a big one hits.
This was the first photo I took when I pulled up to my house for the first time, four days after the storm.
I remember thinking, "Hey, it's still standing. We can fix this."
Then I crawled over downed trees into the backyard, and found the fatal injury to the old girl.
A massive old magnolia had fallen across the roof, crushing the section that wasn't knocked off outright. From there it was just a matter of spending $9300 to clear enough downed trees to get the U-Haul up to the door, step inside to stench and heat and aqua-blue mold running down the walls, and drag out what we could.
So yeah, I know a little about the chaos. You were flipping burgers in King's Point while we were dealing with near complete devastation. So we moved to the next county and rebuilt our lives.
But to the extent I still have a theology, it ascribes to God the attribute of making something very good out of the worst setbacks. "Behold, I am making all things new." And God or Creation or a Higher Power or the Universe, whatever label you hang on that being greater than yourself, ourselves, did just that. And the new is so much better than the old I can't imagine how we lived in that old world that was so unceremoniously scraped away four years ago today.
So I began this rant with annoyance, and end with gratitude.
Looking out over that same patio four years later, Peg curled up on the next pillow, full moon over this beautiful bay that's been a part of my life for more days than it hasn't. I wouldn't trade it, and wouldn't have missed the ride it took to get here.
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