Here we are.
In 24 hours, I will have completed my final moments on air
at WTSP and will be embarking on my final New Year’s Eve in Tampa Bay. Perhaps it’s the rain…the lack of sleep…some
pull of the moon even…but this otherwise stalwart pragmatist is driven to
nostalgia. It’s an uncomfortable place –
but so goes the theme of 2014. Stand
outside your comfort zone long enough, and the disconcerting cold pricklies on
your skin begin to turn to enthusiastic warm fizzies. Funny how similar they feel.
It’s cold where we are going. So I’m told over and over and over daily by
my colleagues and friends. Mind you – we
are all Floridian – almost all of us transplants, but we all came here for one
reason or another. Those reasons range
from new starts to jumpstarts, but we all have one thing in common: the
sun. We crave its warmth, and here in
Florida, we can get it in abundance. We
live in vacation-land. We are the
reprieve for those poor, chilled folks who travel here from where I am
going. So I’m told.
But, something changed in 2014. Up until this year, the Bay was my baby. My husband is the lifer, but I somehow felt
that I was cosmically a part of the tapestry woven by the immigrants who
largely built the collection of cities I have come to love. They travelled from places afar, and I just
came from Texas, but those bridges are every bit as much mine as anyone’s – at least,
I have always felt that way. But, on
March 6th, 2014, I somehow stopped needing the sun, the sand, the
sidewalks of the Burg. As I stand beside
the seawall across from Straub Park now, my gaze is not on the boats in the
marina, but on my son’s smile. With him
and his father now completing my team, I am free. My sun goes with me to the great white north
where there are bears, moose, cheese and beer in excess. (Maybe not moose. I kind of hope so, though.)
This is not to say that there is not still a golden place in
my heart where the Burg abides. I hold
high the rooftop at The Birchwood, the brick courtyard of Cantina, the flamingo
pink façade of the Don Cesar, the sunset deck at Caddy’s. But, the truth is, my priceless collection of
friends and “extended family” compiled here is worth infinitely more than any
of those sun-kissed locales. Because I
was here, I have the love of my life in Oshkosh overalls. I have my incredibly talented and usually
congenial husband. I have a god-daughter who is smarter than all of us and will
probably be president or the next Tina Fey one day. Her mother may as well be my sister – people already
believe her to be. I have a spirit guide
with a pixie haircut and a heart of gold whose progeny is Beyonce reincarnate. I even have my very own version of Julia
Louis-Dreyfuss who took her game westward a year ago. God, has it been a year? But because she went, I know that my leaving is
not equal to letting go. The ties that
bind us all are made of sturdy stuff, and neither the salt on the roads in
snowy Wisconsin nor the salt in the air on St. Pete Beach can corrode our
connections.
As for my cohorts at WTSP – my kindreds - the misguided folks
who chose a similar path to mine – this is a transient business. We are all rather used to goodbyes, aren’t
we? But we do get our share of “hellos”
in the process. Those make the “miss you”
moments more bearable. To all of you, I
simply say this: who would know better
than us how very small the world is? We are
the ones who make it so. Given that, I
expect to be informed of all of your comings and goings – from job changes to
new additions (wink, wink). I’m-a-be
watching!
So, while where I’m going might be cold, I won’t be. I pocketed plenty of Florida sunshine by way
of each and every one of you – enough for the Sinn clan to stay toasty for many
winters to come. I also got a heated
mattress pad for Christmas.
Be well. Be
kind. Be warm. Don’t be strangers. C’est la vie, et la vie est bonne!
