Wise Words Archive

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brian D. Rucker of Milton who knows everything – and I mean everything – about the history of this area and, really, the entire Panhandle. It was fascinating.

I hope to be much older still before I’m done, but I have already lived long enough to hold several worlds in my hands.

First, there was my childhood, where we played outside, slapped at mosquitoes and ran freely back and forth to neighbors’ houses without our parents worrying if we would make it there safely.

Like many of us, I had packed away most of my masks, stopped dousing myself in hand sanitizer and savored the freedom of being vaccinated. I had hoped that the worst of the pandemic was behind us.

Growing up in what is now a bursting-at-the-seams Chicago suburb, I lived next door to a cottage without indoor plumbing.

The cottage had been the goat shed of the homestead in our rural area and, as children, we were fascinated by its primitive plumbing.

Once in a while, I remember to play.

What came so naturally to us as children is less obvious to our aging adult bodies and sensibilities. We have been conditioned to focus on dignity, task completion, responsibility and worrying what people will think about us.

It seems several lifetimes have passed since I sat in the grass on the side of a hill in a small community outside Rockford, Illinois, watching fireworks with my boyfriend.

I was 17, about to head off to college and had no idea what the next decades would bring.

For the last nine months, I’ve been immersed in the worlds of Navarre and Santa Rosa County.

It’s been fascinating and challenging to understand the smaller community of the area stretched along U.S. Highway 98 and the county, which includes everything from high-rise condominiums to agriculture.

I grew up with snow and ice in the winter, the smell of burning leaves in the fall and tulips popping up in strange places in the spring, along with a sea of mud.

The summers in Illinois were warm enough for swimming and boating, as long as you chose the right day of the year and the right time of the day.

I grew up jumping off high dives, which were common in community pools back then. I spent hours each week in the water during the summer months, both the chlorinated kind and the muddy lukewarm river kind that ran past my house.

Before my oldest two children went to college, I made each of them a book.

I filled a three-ring binder with letters from close friends and family members, as well as advice on all of the things that you don’t know you don’t know until you get far from home.