Bailing out

Jun 02, 98 | 12:11 am

Just got home from our house down in Florida. It was sort of a reconnaissance mission to check out the place, and also to just sort of stand still, breathe, and decide whether or not I could really exist away from New York City.

The house looked okay, considering it had been rented for the last five years. The tiles around the pool are badly cracked, the carpeting is disgusting, and fresh paint is in order. But the air conditioning is sound, the roof is good, and no one took a hammer to the walls. It's do-able.

Daddy is everywhere in that house. Everything we had of his, the boat, his cars, the clubs, the endless volumes of books, were sold at an estate sale my mom held when we had to move out of the ancient sprawling Victorian I grew up in.

The vacation house almost bankrupted us at one point. It was on the market for years after my dad died, but real estate was in a real slump. Finally, we rented it out, and then things got a bit better financially, and now, here we are.