Some Things I Have Seen

I have a friend who seems to be operating on a completely different time-frame than I am. It's as if he lives on another planet where time is measured differently or maybe he's discovered some secret time-stretcher or maybe, just maybe, he is more adventuresome, energetic and wastes a lot less time doing things on the internet.

I'm not sure.

When he goes on a vacation he can easily fit some early-morning yoga, a swim, a jog, eighteen holes of golf, three gourmet meals, a nap and a couple of museum visits into one day. And this is how he relaxes.

Me? I'm lucky to walk a few miles and get lunch in. Seriously.

But I have seen a few things on this trip and here I am, wasting time- no! I mean, making good use of my leisure time! by reporting in here.

The most striking thing I have seen on this little adventure was the most amazing comb-over I've ever personally laid eyes on. It was beyond horrible and went well into the absolutely unbelievable category. We sat behind the man sporting it at a busy breakfast place and I could barely take my eyes off the complicated train wreck which was his hairdo. He was accompanied by a relatively regular-looking wife as well as what appeared to be their daughter and her two children, one of which was the prettiest baby I've ever seen despite the fact that she was bald. Granddaddy should take a tip from her- bald can be beautiful!

I've also seen some pretty night skies. We would have seen what was probably a beautiful and soul-stirring sunset yesterday but we were asleep. We did manage to see the right-after-the-sunset-sky and that was real nice, although it lacked the drama of the actual sunset.

I've seen an awful lot of really fat Americans. Whoa. No need to go on about that. We saw a roller-bladin' granny today who was wearing very little and what there was of it was black spandex. To her I say, "You go, girl!" She looked great.

I've seen a lot of bougainvillea, incredible palms of various and exotic species, some lovely, flat Gulf seas rolling quietly into shore with gentle swishes and hisses of foam, a tree fern that made me realize why they call them tree ferns, and the cutest little Yorkie who was so tiny that that my Yorkie could have eaten her for lunch.

And I may have seen Jeff Bridges, although my husband says no, it wasn't him.

I'm as boring outside of Lloyd as I am in Lloyd.

Didn't think it was possible, did ya?

Well, it is and I am.

We did just make a drink and walk down to the beach to check out tonight's sunset but due to an incredibly thick seafog, the sun was nowhere in sight. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but we sure aren't going to see it.

Oh well.

One more thing I've seen is the house that we have so graciously been offered on loan for the last two nights of our little trip. This house belongs to the friend of a friend and I can't believe I'm saying this in a public place but we've driven by it several times now and each time I am shocked anew at the sight of it. Can I just say that without a doubt it is the ugliest and least charming house on the entire island of Anna Maria?
Maybe it's really cute on the inside. And I shouldn't look a gift house in the mouth, right? But honestly- there isn't even a tree in the yard and it's not like it's on the beach. It's orange, okay? Orange cement block. With dark orange trim.

We may come home early.

Unless we decide to take up golf or something.

I'll let you know.

Sound of the childhood bell...

My daddy was a drunk. A real, no holds-barred drunk. He was the kind of drunk who would go off and leave the family to really get into his habit, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. He was the black sheep of a prominent Tennessee family, trained and licensed as a lawyer (the family business) but unable to hold down a job. When he bought a gun and started threatening my mother with it, she knew she had to flee, which she did in the dark of night with me and my brother.
She took us to a tiny village on the east coast of Florida called Roseland where her parents lived in a small cottage across a sandy dirt road from a slow-moving, muck filled river. Granddaddy, who owned a little property, built a cement block, terrazzo-floored house for us to live in, my mother got work as a third-grade teacher at the Sebastian elementary, and my brother and I settled in to what would turn out to be the happiest part of our mostly shitty childhood. If there were any moments of magic and goodness in our growing up years, they were spent right here, in the snaky, jungly, hot, humid village of Roseland where I am visiting right now.
Yes, I've left my beloved home to come here to Roseland with my husband to celebrate his birthday. We're staying at a place on the river, a few blocks down from where my Granddaddy and Granny lived. I found this rental on the Vacation Rental By Owner web site a few years ago and as the description and pictures came up on my computer, I couldn't believe what I was seeing because I had known this place and known it well as a child.
When I was young, unlike today, kids were trusted not to get into situations where they might be maimed or die. We were sent off on our bikes, or on foot, to "play." Play was serious business in those days. We played war in the jungle, we fished for poisonous catfish on the community dock, we traced hopscotches and marble circles in the dirt roads with rocks. And we explored.
One of the places we found in our explorations was a piece of property on the river, guarded by a crumbling stucco fence and rusted iron gates. We pushed these open to behold the burnt ruins of a large house, a small stucco building still intact, and, wonder of wonders- a huge cement pool, empty, but still guarded by four lions, one at each corner.
You have to understand- Roseland had no pools and no grand houses. It was mostly small shacks that fishermen and their families lived in. There was one paved road. And so when we found that pool and what had obviously been some sort of estate, it was like we had discovered the ancient ruins of the Inca. Even seven and eight-year olds could see that this place had been something back when in its day.
And it was a place I had dreamed about, quite literally, my entire adult life- the once beautiful grounds, the house that had burned, the iron gates, the little stucco house with a tower, and especially that huge, empty pool.
So when the pictures came up on my computer, I sucked in a breath and said, "Lord have mercy. It's still there."
And here it is. Two very industrious and far-seeing men from Atlanta had bought the place and restored it. A different house had been built where the big house burned and they had fixed up the whole place, cut back the jungle, landscaped, built a dock on the river, and most wonderfully of all- filled the pool where the lions still stood guard, only now spouting water from their mouths into the sweet blue waters of a pool that is just as big as it had seemed to us kids back a million years ago.
And I have stayed here now three times. Last year, I spent a week by myself to celebrate my birthday. I had the entire place to myself- the big house was unrented. I spent hours on the dock every night watching the sky go through its sunset changes, watching the fish boil and feed in the river as the tide changed. I spent hours walking the still-dirt roads of Roseland, exploring like I had as a child, rediscovering. It was amazing how little had changed. Even the shacks were still here, looking somehow better than they did forty-something years ago, and each one of those little houses, each dirt road, each path through the woods, each bend of the river, held a thousand memories for me.
And here I am again, this time with my husband. He likes it here because it's beautiful. I had thought I grew up in paradise, but it's only been since coming back as an adult that I realize I truly did. So besides being a paradise here on earth (albeit a paradise that's still hot, humid, buggy and snaky), it's the place for me where there was magic.
Can't beat that.
We stay in the little cabana house, tricked out now like something from a magazine with a big open room, a sweet kitchen with Florida pink appliances and a terrazzo floor. Outside the kitchen window is a view that holds the lions and their pool and the beautifully landscaped lot that stretches down to the river.
As much as I love my North Florida home with its giant ancient oaks, to me, this part of the state is the real Florida. No condos in sight, just palms, mangroves, jungle islands, a railroad trestle crossing the river built by Henry Flagler, osprey, pelicans, dolphins that come up from the Atlantic, jumping mullet, bougainvillea, mango trees, blooming hibiscus.
And yesterday, floating in the pool with my husband, the lions, freshly painted startlingly white, spitting out cool streams of water, I thought that this pool is a a great metaphor for my life. At one time, my life, like this pool, was in ruin, abandoned, empty, and in great need of care, attention, and tremendous work. But there was the spark of great worth in it. And slowly and with sometimes little obvious progress, an amazing amount of work has been done, so that now, like the pool, my life is full and sweet.
It's an amazing thought that forty something years after I first saw this pool, stared at it with wide eyes, trying to imagine what it had been in its glory days, I can now slip into it, dive deep, eyes wide open, then surface to the blue sky and clear air.
Man. You can go home again.
Another miracle.