La Florida - Post Script

I found the Cross Creek trip photos, and am including with FaceBook commentary for date and context.

La Florida

So, I’m finding it hard to write this post about how much I love my adopted home state, similar to how I struggle sometimes to explain my ongoing love affair with my sobriety - there’s still a bit of wonder and mystery to both of them. And part of me doesn’t even need or want that to go away.  

But what’s clear is this and I guess the best way to tell it is through all the Florida books I have read: it’s easy to fall in love with the beaches here (esp Gulf Coast beaches which I highly prefer to the East), endless summer and palm trees, beautiful blue water and white sand, the glorious sunrise and sunset; it’s much harder to appreciate the interior of this state, the “Florida scrub” and cracker history, and to see around the behemoth that is Disney (see Team Rodent by Carl Hiaasen) in the messy middle of it all.  

It’s difficult to face and fully acknowledge the state’s bloody racist past (see Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove and Beneath A Ruthless Sun) not to mention present, hard to reconcile what I love with the cruel conservative politics, “individualism” unto lawlessness, the ignorance, and greed-fueled ecological destruction happening ever since Florida was discovered by the larger US population (find a wonderful description of “the way it was” in A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith). 

It’s tempting simply to mourn the beauty that has been lost (The Everglades: River of Grass, which I’ve actually not read but just got from lib.), or get stuck in thinking about how the state could have been developed in a more sane and rational way (For Sale: American Paradise).  

It’s easy to get distracted by routine zaniness that seems to happen only here, in a state where everyone is from somewhere else, and half of them seem to be running from something. Where vacationers don’t know where they are going and some people are too old - or too busy texting - to drive properly and so the car accidents are numerous and phenomenal in nature.There’s a saying, or maybe I made it up, that you shake the country and all the detritus ends up at this bottom-most state. And it can be off-putting, I mean, we all laugh at “Florida Man” but no one really wants to be him.  Or even have him as a neighbor, let’s face it.   

Still, I love this place, crazies and all, to me it’s somehow just the Best.State.Ever (Dave Barry) and to appreciate it you have to read Florida by Lauren Groff, Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel or Swamplandia! by Karen Russell; Tourist Season or anything else by Carl Hiaasen; my husband loves John McDonald and Randy Wayne White but I never really got into those well-known Florida authors as much as Hiaasen, who can make you get angry, laugh, and cringe about this state we’re in, all at the same time. 

And of course The Yearling, which started my Florida love affair that went beyond the beaches…years ago I wrote Fear & Loathing on FaceBook Etc. in part about reading that book and seeing the movie, thought I had also written about the trip we took to Ocala and Majorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek homestead, now a state park, and how we actually magically did see a couple deer from afar, standing in a riverbed now completely overgrown with vegetation (drought being just one of the ecological problems we have here), but apparently I didn’t cover that at all. I have photos in my head from that trip which I can’t find on my phone or FaceBook…all lost and merged in the jumble of time I guess.

But my book club’s selection this month just happens to be The Life She Wished to Live, a new bio of Rawlings by Ann McCutchan, and reading it has brought this all back to me again. Along with reliving my discovery of interior, rural and small town Florida, I’m also learning something new: what an incredible, and incredibly flawed, woman she was - the NY Times article states  “This is the most recent biography of Rawlings, after Elizabeth Silverthorne’s “Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek” appeared in 1988. It’s a pleasure to meet this cursing, hard-drinking, brilliant, self-destructive, car-wrecking, fun-loving, chain-smoking, alligator-hunting, moonshine-making, food-obsessed woman again on the page.” 

Also how she struggled with her writing - the article goes on to say - “She wanted the unvarnished truth about it, and about everything else. She warned Perkins: ‘I will bring up a live rattlesnake and drop it on your desk if you are ever polite about my stuff and I catch you at it.’ To a friend she wrote: ‘Sexual failure, lack of happiness, none of it matters if I can say the things I want to say.’”

So, as I identify with and admire this woman’s life and I struggle to “say the things I want to say” about the Florida that I’ve come to know and love (maybe a little bit like her), I feel that I am in such great company.

The Luckiest Girl in the World

I used to bristle when people called me a “girl” - ever since I got to my small liberal arts college and at the tender age of 18 we were told we had the right to be called “women” now.  We were also told that the usage of “men” as a general term covering both genders, was no longer acceptable. So, we weren’t Freshmen we were “First Year Students” and it was the “Women’s Soccer Team” I played on, because we certainly were NOT Girls any longer. (Side note: given how ideas of gender and identity have evolved since then, I wonder what “they” tell “them” now?)

In any case, now that I am “old” I say “sure, please call me a girl”! while the lines on my face tell another story. I’m embracing the term again and it does seem like it got some renewed cultural currency somewhere along the way, with publication of popular books turned movies (think Gone Girl, The Girl with all the Gifts, Girl on the Train etc.). To me the word no longer carries any of the weight it once did, and I know the desire to avoid aging, or appearance of aging, is just perpetuating the cult of eternal youth, with its ridiculous and unobtainable standards, especially for women. But there it is.

The other significance of this blog post title is a book with similar name that I remember so fondly, a lesser known YA work by famous author Beverly Cleary: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/395464.The_Luckiest_Girl  I guess I’m going to have to reread the book - I don’t remember precisely why the protagonist was the luckiest girl, but I remember when she temporarily relocated to sunny, mystical CA from rainy, boring Oregon she was amazed by creeks that ran dry, and impressed by boys who came to class with tired eyes and dark streaks on their noses from the smudging they did in early hours to save orange groves during a cold snap. It must have been because everything was so new and exciting and interesting and fun. It may also have been the way the story ended for her (spoiler alert!), with her getting the guy, but not the one she thought she wanted, the one she could truly love, who was her best friend.  Awwwwwwwwwww 😍

I think I loved this book as a young person also because it reminded me of my mother - she grew up in Portland, OR just like Cleary and the book took place in the 50s, when my Mom grew up also. The book is featured in an interesting post on the “Lost Classics of Teen Lit” which mentions the other YA book I remember so well from Cleary, called Fifteen. I also find it an interesting coincidence the protagonist is named Shelley, which is a nickname I abhorred and avoided successfully all my life; only my Dad got away with teasingly calling me that from time to time.

In any case, I may not remember clearly why Shelley was the luckiest girl, but I know why I am.  I used to say when my husband and I first quit our jobs, sold everything, and moved down to Florida “I just want to know how my story ends” - a fear-based wondering I no longer have. Because I’m no longer anxious about the future and I don’t dwell any longer on my roads not taken, such as the literature professor or author of books I could have been. Nights are calm and peaceful - I sleep pretty well - days are technicolor freedom - for over 6 years now I’ve had this release from a kind of prison. I’ve regained my health, discovering new ways to use this one imperfect body I have. I’ve taken responsibility for my past, for my actions, my feelings, my relationships.  Now I truly do look forward to a future that can be anything I want it to be. 

And when I claim to be the luckiest girl in the world, I have so much gratitude. It’s not that I put myself above anybody else, it’s just that I’m truly in awe of my life now, and I can’t really take the credit, so hopefully this is not perceived as all egotism and arrogance. It’s just that I can’t even really explain it to this day, especially when it could have so easily gone the other way. So, if life is a game we play only against our former selves, I feel as if I’ve always already won, so long as I don’t take any of it for granted.

 

the city, so quiet

on an early Sunday morning

as I take my leave… 

some sirens in the distance 

the air is cool, the sun 

strangely weak for summer 

filters down through trees 

signaling sadness - nearby 

church bells ring 

sometimes I think 

that I don’t remember much 

about growing up in Seattle 

but in my heart I remember 

everything 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiY6kijYHE&list=RDcdiY6kijYHE

Freedom

Oh, freedom, Oh, freedom

Oh freedom over me 

And before I'd be a slave
I'd be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free

~ author unknown

These days I have…

The Freedom to stay or go

The Freedom to say yes or no

The Freedom to admit when I am 

wrong, or don’t know something 

the Freedom to say I’m sorry 

or I’m angry without spinning 

off into emotions that 

are out of control 

the Freedom to have feelings

and boundaries, to have good 

days and bad - the Freedom to 

finally fully mourn the long-ago

death of my Dad

The Freedom to acknowledge

That I, and even my Freedom, are 

A work in progress

The Longest Day

 Happy Summer Solstice!

Summer Solstice

Rose Styron

Suddenly,

there's nothing to do

and too much—

the lawn, paths, woods

were never so green

white blossoms of every

size and shape—hydrangea,

Chinese dogwood, mock orange

spill their glistening—

Inside, your photographs

and books stand guard

in orderly array. Your

half of the bed is smooth,

the pillows plump, the phone

just out of reach beyond it.

No one calls early—they

remember your late hours.

The shades are down, so

sunlight's held at bay

though not the fabulous winged

song of summer birds

waking me as ever, always in our

favorite room, our season.

Yesterday's mail on the desk

newspaper, unread. Plans for the day

hover bright out all our doors—

Don't think of evening.

From Fierce Day by Rose Styron. Copyright © 2015 by Rose Styron. Reprinted by permission of the author.

https://poets.org/poem/summer-solstice

Other solstice Poems: https://poets.org/poem/solstice

https://poets.org/poem/summer-time

https://poets.org/poem/solstice-0

I Keep Crying in Yoga Class

usually in child’s pose...

because it’s June

so soon, and my mind’s 

still stuck in March

when we four siblings 

last time lived together 

in our family home and 

took it all apart

now, just scratch the surface

and there’s tears

because it sold (what a relief!) and

I can’t stop thinking about the

quick blink of these past 25 years

the house precariously maintained

by Mom, and lucky for us it was enough!

but nothing compared to how Dad loved it

I took for granted his constant house projects 

growing up: Mariner’s game on the radio

interspersed with sound of the circular saw

my childhood disinterest in all his hard work

replaced now by adult understanding and awe

and what would he think of what it became?

these shining hardwood floors, the 

pristinely-pressure washed and

painted decks, the new French doors?

sorrow rising up in me when

I think of golden moments

only realized after they are gone

and pride picturing Dad smiling 

up in heaven, as we cash in his 

house to take care of Mom 😍

Our House

Our house

is a very very very fine house

with 2 cats in the yard

life used to be so hard

now everything is easy cuz of you 

~ Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

https://youtu.be/tKYjUn-SBcg

Our Dad loved our house.  Besides his family and his accounting business, it was probably the major focus of his life.  Who can forget how he dug out the basement, one bucket of dirt at a time, before refinishing it, paying the neighborhood kids 5 cents a bucket? (5 cents!) 

Recently my siblings and I sort of out-loud wondered “what did he do with all that dirt?” and my childhood memory doesn’t include that detail but most likely he used it to grade the front yard where he built a retaining wall.  He also built a wrap around deck on which we had more cookouts than can be counted.  He wanted to get a wood-burning stove for the rec room basement and talked about finishing the attic also. 

And who knows, he may have actually gotten to these projects if not for his untimely death back in 1996.

Our Mom maintained the house pretty well in the intervening 25 years (with a lot of help from her family and friends). Even so, we found there was quite a bit of work to do fixing the few critical items we found with inspection completed last spring, and to overall make it look “clean and fresh” - hoping that some lucky buyer is going to pay top dollar for it, since it’s really our Mom’s only remaining asset.  All of that plus just getting all the STUFF out of there, before the fixing up even started, has been an intense experience. 

This last visit to Seattle, unlike the one in March, my sister and I couldn’t stay at the house like we normally do when we go “home” because of course it’s emptied of all furniture, and my two brothers have been moved out for a few weeks now.  But we made multiple trips from our nearby Airbnb and each time the house had transformed a little bit more, and now I am seeing the final changes from afar.

Our house transforming - until it’s almost unrecognizable as ours.

Approaching Fifty, She’s Still Writing Poetry

And maybe it’s embarrassing

Because it’s not always good

But I’ve not always done the age

-appropriate things that I should

so why start now?

Refused children, developed a decent

Career despite myself, bottomed out but

Got clean and healthy, re-discovered endorphins

stayed married somehow

Maybe that’s all of my life in a nutshell

But now I read these silly 

notes from middle school, 

love letters from college 

boyfriends and air-mail envelopes 

 - par avion - from women friends 

contain adventures we had, musings, 

stories, aspirations for our lives ahead - 

lives we now live and I wonder: 

do any of us have 

what we envisioned?

Some days are dreary - 

Doing dishes, answering voice mail,

Filing taxes and tending endless

Needs of children - others are golden - 

That trip to Portugal, births and sunsets,

family and college reunions, 

A really good meal

All - I would speculate - are fortunately

pretty well grounded, but these missives

From the past remind me that

Once upon a time

We flew

https://youtu.be/LQS9vr1j06U

Break Your Heart

 

Daffodils and cherry tree blossoms

Sibling fights and realizations

Such as “our mom was a slight hoarder”

It’s so painful to still be a child

In this house and inexorably

Getting older

Efficient trips to Goodwill

In the wet weather

Slow walks to mom’s ALF

In the softening sun

Masked backyard gathering

With childhood friends

Screaming tears of laughter 

At adolescent anguish we documented 

Proves that even adult women with

invalid parents in a Pandemic can still be 

“girls just wanna have fun”

Back at 1710 the work is

Slowly, amazingly 

Getting done

One more drawer to empty 

Of its contents...wait, just one more...

How did we get here?

Are we doing the right thing?

Is there any way out of this

Other than such a scary 

final door?

As I walk and drive my childhood

City, spring arrives with 

daffodils & cherry tree blossoms

I should return “home” more frequently 

So I can break my heart more often

If that is what hearts are for