Changing Times

 

Pickleball was cancelled this morning on account of damp.

Wet courts and aging bones are not a healthy combination. And yes, My Guy and I really do have enough sense to be grateful we’re here in Florida while every other single person we know or are related to are shoveling and slipping and shivering.

But I’ve never seen this much rain here at this time of year. In fact, generally we would go for weeks in the winter without seeing a drop. In the winter months we’re usually bemoaning the evaporating pool outside that’s supposed to be a small pond.

This week our daughter in New Jersey texted to say that school was cancelled yet again and the temps were plummeting. Coincidentally, just then I was watching the old “Day After Tomorrow” – the one about a climate Armageddon – and realized that my reaction when I read her text was pretty much, “yup”.

This movie used to seem like science fiction, but these days we’re absorbing weather aberrations with a fatalistic acceptance. The movie’s triple simultaneous tornadoes in San Francisco? Softball-sized chunks of ice falling from Tokyo skies?

The ocean washing over NYC streets? It doesn’t seem so far-fetched now.

          The first day we arrived here, we drove down to the causeway (whose giant boulders and asphalt path were washed away last year in a storm) that reaches toward the Gulf. We were lucky to score a spot for our car with a first row view of the ocean. It was about 70 out, with a stiff wind, nothing unusual. Except the water was filled with surfers in wet suits, riding the waves rolling in from some storm far out at sea, something I’ve never seen on our placid waters.