One of the reasons I moved back to Delray Beach was to help my mother take care of Grandma and Pop Cason.

My dad had waited on them hand and foot, every day of his life, and, now that he was gone, they were going to expect someone else to do it.

They were going to expect my mother to do it.

My mother didn't like them. They treated her like a red-headed stepchild.

I felt, as the oldest son, it was my duty to do it.

Apropos of duty, my dad died from putting other people's needs ahead of his own, including giving up on his dream of becoming a minister when Pop had a nervous breakdown because Dad wasn't there to run his business for him.

When I did Pop's taxes for him, he mentioned to me, in an offhand way, that if Dad had stuck with the preaching he would have had a ministerial pension by now.

By now Dad was dead. And one of the reasons was Pop, I felt.

But if he thought Pop appreciated what he did, Pop didn't.

He expected it, he demanded it, but he didn't appreciate it. He took it for granted.

I did take care of Grandma Cason and Pop.

The Cottage was within hailing distance of their house. And I was hailed every day, to run some errand or other, fix something, around the house.

Mind you, I got a house out of it, on generous terms. The Cottage. I am not complaining.

If I was going to help them, it might as well be handy.

Grandma Cason had an operation, and needed nursing care, afterwards. Uncle Van arranged for them both to move into a retirement home in Jacksonville that provided medical care. A nursing home.

We moved into their house to protect it from vandals and rented The Cottage to a co-worker of Brenda's.

In their house, we had much more room. Space. It had a master bedroom and a second bedroom and a bathroom upstairs and three bedrooms and two bathrooms downstairs, one bedroom and bathroom for each of the boys and a guest bedroom with a choice of two bathrooms to use.

I took the second bedroom upstairs for a writing studio.

My eyrie, I called it, after Jeffers' Hawk Tower, at Tor House.

Grandma died, and then Pop died.

I inherited enough money to buy their house from the estate, pay the note on The Cottage off, and sell The Cottage to a man I knew in AA. The man Brenda had rented it to moved out, leaving The Cottage vulnerable to vandals.

So I had gone, as I say, from living in a hovel to being a slum lord.

I had a paid-for house and the income from a mortgage on a second house.

Now all I needed was a job.