Two Junes ago - a perfect combination and setting

                “Writers, like other dangerous criminals, should come to know solitary confinement.” – Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

 I had been in Florida when he delivered his speech to the Arkansas Writer’s Conference, but  caught it in his next Sunday’s column. (Which saw double duty.)

Greenberg’s sentence hit me like a dirt clod. For each of eight mornings, some days as early as 6:15, I sat in solitude (not solitary confinement, but still...) and read and wrote. It was like being at a writers’ colony with Gulf breezes and doves as a background for creativity. What better place could I find myself?

Never mind that I had to look out over a parking lot as large as a football field. I tried to look up and beyond to the little patch of Gulf across the street and behind a row of ubiquitous condos fenced in against any but the owners/ guests. 

Our arrival at the condo turned out to be not-so-pleasant. The air conditioning labored, but got no cooler than 74 degrees. Billy couldn’t stand the heat so all the others in our party--Billy, his mother, his sister and a friend—“jumped ship” and stayed at J.’s place. “An emergency,” Daughter said, until a definite complaint to the lessors could be made the next day.

I found myself alone in room 2C of Tristan Towers, which touted three queen-sized beds but held only one-- they must have meant a blow-up mattress (in the closet) and a pull-out sofa for the other two. I had an oscillating fan that Billy traded for my smaller “face” fan.     

The AC was repaired later the next day, but by 6:15 Friday morning, I was outside on the deck.

Myriad doves with a different sound than those at home—a 3-pulse motif: coo-coooooo-cuk ––called over and over.

Sights included the horizon––the curved edge of the earth––a cloudless sky, dog walkers, joggers, swallows, palms, oleanders, river gravel, ornamental grasses and CARS! 

A business man, satchel in one hand, lunch in the other, purple shirt, taupe trousers, walked to the farthest vehicle in the parking lot––a slate gray hatchback. Before exiting, he pulled over to the concrete barrier/fence and hosed off the car and then headed into the gate’s security eye and disappeared. He must have been one of the 90 families who lived in the Towers. (I counted the mailboxes in the lobby!)

A dove settled on the top of a nearby light standard. Before I could get a good look through my binoculars, it flew. Another--or perhaps the one that flew—a gray blob fluffing its feathers--perched on the clubhouse chimney.

A cool breeze barely moved; a school bus passed silently––the merging of nature versus man, an attempt to meld them into a mecca where inlanders like us long to go on vacation.

If folks needed and enjoyed solitude as much as I did, they’d escape to a deserted place where only the water, birds, and fish were companionable. And the breeze.

My family didn’t know what a gift they gave me when they—for want of a cooler abode—fled to J.’s place for the night.

And they left me in a $1680-for-ten-days, Gulf-area condo—spacious, q-u-i-e-t, orderly.

For a day or so, at least.