Florida...

Such a complicated set of emotions I have for this place...I spent the whole of my life going to and from Florida.  All of my life I have been in and out of that state.  A state that is mired in controversy, radical extremes, wondrous beauty, heat, wet and very complicated emotions.

I spent my childhood intermittently in the Sarasota/Bradenton area.  And I lived there briefly in high school with my grandfather in between moves.  I remember the way the old garage smelled.  There was this musty comforting feeling that I cannot describe better.  It smelled old but in a way that made you feel alive and cared for.  I know that is a weird thing to say about an old garage with a sand floor.  But that is how it was.  

The air was always intoxicating with orange blossoms in the spring from all the citrus trees in his yard.  And by mid summer, there was a funk I can still recall when the fallen fruit rotted on the ground (not for long because my grandfather was proud like that - he took care of his things - his home - his farm).  

I broke my arm in the neighbors tree when I was 3.  I was pretending to be a monkey and forgot I didn’t have a tail.  Broke my arm so badly it looked like a Z.  Luckily for all of us, it didn’t break through the skin. I can still remember the look on my mom’s face as I ran into the kitchen...she and my grandma were horrified.  And no one had a car to take me to the hospital.  As I recall, a neighbor drove me and my mom to the hospital.

I avoided that fucking tree well into my teens as I completely blamed it for not supporting me better.  Completely forgetting that it was my own imagination that caused the whole debacle and the tree really was an innocent bystander.

Later, I met some of my best friends ever in college in Tampa.  We partied our asses off but also ushered each other through some incredibly hard times.  I am still friends with most of them to this day.  Sadly, one of them is no longer with us. His own battles with addiction taking him from us far too soon.

Then later, moving to Tallahassee where I graduated college and law school. My parents retired to and I finally and blessed hit bottom with my own addiction.  I got sober there.  I almost got married there.  I did a lot of growing up there.  I spent a great deal of time on ancient rivers, canoeing and paddle boarding.  Always being mindful that each time you ventured in those waters, you were never sure you would be leaving them.  Gators abound but that didn’t stop me from enjoying their home environment and the clear spring fed waterways that still make my heart full by just remembering.

I had my daughter in Jacksonville, Florida when my ex-husband and I were stationed there.  We lived a few blocks from the beach and I got to run the beach every morning.  I was on the state license for sea turtle rescue and my children and I spent countless hours combing the beach for shark teeth turtles and shells.

And then there is the beach.  Florida has 8,436 miles of coastline.  And I have been to most of it.  From Jacksonville, to Key West to Tampa/St. Pete, to Pensacola, I have walked it all.  And I have to say, there is something very special about that coastline to me.  It is almost sacred.  I love the fineness of the sand.  How it feels almost like powder, the grit has been ground down through years of tidal turning.  The long, empty expanses of beach that allow one to walk for miles and so much of it without a great number of people to inhibit.  

I have a friend who lives in the Pensacola area now, and she sends me sunrise photos often.  And it makes me long for this complicated place where so many things happened to me and for me.  I feel called back to it, and if I close my eyes, I am there.  I can hear the waves, I can smell the salt air.  I can feel the sand between my toes and the dampness of the humidity on my skin.  It is visceral.  It is primal.  So much of me happened there.

I was grateful to not be there last week as another vicious hurricane had its way with the landscape and inhabitants.  I do not miss the wet, I am apparently better in drier more arid climates.  The high desert landscape suiting me so much more than the lowland sogginess.  

This morning I woke to photos of today’s sunrise in the East.  And I spent a long time looking at the photo and allowing my body to feel the sensations that any thought of Florida evokes in me.  It is part of who I am. This Deep South, this complicated landscape of people, climate, animals and debris.  Florida is where I grew up, and so it is and always will be a part of who and what I am.

Today I feel a longing for it in a way that makes me both happy and sad.  I long to wake up and walk the beach but then I remember how horrible my hair and skin feels, like they both become oversaturated by the weather and I find myself wishing equally to not be there.

Florida, they think, means flowery.  And I can attest that is true of the state.  The flora there mixed with the fauna can both shock and amaze the senses.  And the intoxicating elixir of remembering and forgetting has become forever entangled for me.  It is both pleasant and noxious, comforting and upsetting.  From every thought comes a myriad of conflicting emotions and feelings in some sort of forever duel between the good and the bad.

This morning though this photo greeted me when I opened up my computer.  And it made me smile and close my eyes and lean my head back and feel the ocean breeze on my skin, and to love it in all the passionate ways that I do.  And the remembering made my heart smile.  And that is a lovely way to start any day...thank you Leslie, thank you for this most amazing sunrise from the East. And thank you for you.

Again, still.