Doors to Sunshine
The last time I was in Florida was almost a year ago, when I flew into Miami and drove north, to Palm Beach for my uncle’s funeral. I was back this time, visiting with my Aunt Adele, after flying into West Palm Beach for a business meeting with the Piper aircraft people, further north in Vero Beach. It’s curious how this life spins.
I hadn’t spent much time with Adele, even though she was married to my uncle for almost thirty years. Part of it was that we lived on opposite coasts, and part was the overlay of some antipathy between my father and his only sibling. Rivalry? I don’t know, but I do know that it was a remarkable waste of affection, especially that which Stanley and I held for each other.
Adele, ever gracious, had me quickly settled in my room, and presented with a plate of nibblies, along with a glass and ice, over which I poured some Johnnie Walker Black; Stan’s favorite, she noted. Adele shared with me some photos of her husband, and gave me some handsome cufflinks that my uncle had worn.
Adele looked wonderful, even though she was playing cagey with a cold. I had been flirting with one myself for several days, mostly because I’d been sleeping, not well, in others than my own bed for most of two weeks. We chatted for a while, discussed a schedule for dinner, and she went to lay down to give her cold a chance not to get lost.
I slipped outside to the terrace of her apartment. It is edged by neatly-manicured lawns, tropical foliage, and palm trees that border the dunes above the beach; the Atlantic Ocean, a hundred yards away, undulated benignly on the sand. There had been a gorgeous sunrise that morning, a bright orange orb climbing between layers of clouds, but the rest of the day had been overcast, with showers pockmarking the central part of The Sunshine State. It was still warm and humid that evening, though cooling ever so slightly under a gentle westerly flow, not quite energetic enough to be called a breeze.
Drink in hand, I wandered out to the line between green and sand, soaking up the delicious salt air. Suddenly I recognized a familiar smell, which I couldn’t identify but knew to be Florida. The olfactory sense is our strongest, and can bring back memories more powerfully than Ralph Edwards. The scent of Florida -- probably a tropical plant of some sort -- had been indelibly etched into my conscious during infancy and was recalled some fifty years later.
My grandparents had retired from New York City in 1951, building a house in neighboring Lake Worth. My parents had dropped me off with them that year, so the young couple could go off to Europe. I visited Lake Worth again a half-dozen times into the early 70's, when after my grandfather died, my grandmother sold the house and moved into a condo across the Intercoastal Waterway in Palm Beach.
I had visited their house earlier in the day, and discovered that it was for sale. The young woman who answered my "hullo" was the daughter of the current owner, who had bought it in the 90's. So there was no connection, no trail. She didn’t invite me in, though she apologized for her failure to, twice, but I got what I needed to from outside the gate. The palm tree that had grown from the coconut I had planted in the back yard a half-century earlier was long gone; it had once poked holes in the low clouds. Now there was a pool behind the house, I was told.
I had only happy memories of my time there with my grandparents, and my visit did nothing to change that. No, I had no thoughts of buying the place, even if I could have afforded it. When I had come to Lake Worth many years earlier, it had boasted the oldest age population in the United States, with musak piped out onto the sidewalks, which were rolled up at six every evening. No more; the town is peopled with young folks who enjoy brightly-lit cafes and contemporary music filling the streets. Neither would be my choice, however, not with the Florida weather, its on-’n-off rain, constant humidity, and omnipresent mold.
Adele and I had a wonderful dinner together, with conversation ranging over decades of familiarity and newness. I found in this lady a woman whom I would have loved to have met years ago. Doors close and doors open, rarely on my schedule.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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