Monday, March 24, 2025 Dear Diary, The Gum Date Palm—there it looms in the front yard, a silent, gnarled sentinel. It has stood there for ...
Monday, March 24, 2025
Dear Diary,
The Gum Date Palm—there it looms in the front yard, a silent, gnarled sentinel. It has stood there for decades, braving hurricanes, storms, and the relentless Florida sun. Much like this brick fortress of a house—affectionately (and accurately) dubbed The Brick Bunker—the tree endures, its roots firmly entrenched in the earth as though to defy the chaos of the world around it.
I find myself drawn to its shadow today, as I sit on my perch by the window, where the faint sounds of Barry's morning coffee rituals still linger. This house, Barry’s chosen haven by the Gulf, has a way of holding onto echoes—the creak of footsteps on its hardwood floors, the occasional rustling of a breeze through cracked windows, and, of course, the laughter of children.
Ah, the children. They gather beneath the palm's sprawling fronds, their sticky fingers plucking at fallen dates as if they were treasure. Their laughter carries on the coastal wind, sweet yet faintly distorted as it mingles with the rustling fronds above them. They are oblivious to the weight of time this palm carries, the silent witness it has been to decades of lives, storms, and secrets.
This palm, like the house, breathes with history. Its bark—cracked and creased like the map of some forgotten realm—seems to whisper of what it has seen. What has it observed over the years? Families growing, storms ravaging, secrets buried beneath the earth? The Brick Bunker itself holds its share of mysteries, as I noted just the other day when Barry engaged in yet another of his “cleaning rituals.” Beneath the surface of routine lies the extraordinary, if only one bothers to look closely.
And yet, here I am, Dale T. Doll, perched in relative safety, pondering what I have come to witness myself. The wind through the fronds stirs a memory—or perhaps a feeling. The kind that dances on the edge of your consciousness, not quite clear but potent enough to send a faint shiver down your spine.
Even Not My Cat seems uneasy today. Once known as Back Porch Cat, she has taken to prowling near the Gum Date Palm, her green eyes fixed on something unseen. Perhaps she senses the weight of the tree’s presence, or perhaps it’s simply her feline intuition, picking up on something I cannot perceive. There is always something unknowable lingering just beyond the reach of understanding, isn’t there?
So, I watch and wonder. Will the palm, sturdy as it is, be here long after Barry has shuffled off to wherever humans go when their time in this world ends? Will its fronds continue to stretch toward the sky, even
as the Gulf shifts and changes, as all things do?
But perhaps most of all, I wonder: what has it already witnessed, etched into its twisted bark and stretching shadows?
Time will tell, dear Diary. Time always does.
Yours in contemplation of roots and shadows,
Dale T, Doll
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