We’re in Florida for a few days to visit family. For once I packed running shoes. Florida doesn’t require bulky clothes, and I’ve been eating and drinking nonstop since the beginning of November on my work trips, and the weather would be pleasant for running, so I sacrificed some of my luggage space for the shoes. Up until today, I’ve run every morning we’ve been here.
This means that every afternoon, in the doldrums of the day, in the time between lunch and dinner that’s lazy and free when you’re on vacation, I have down time. Two of our days, we’ve all brought our novels down to the neighborhood pool. It’s too cool to swim, at least for me — I wore short sleeves and bare feet, but with long pants — but it’s lovely to sit in the sun by the sparkling blue water and listen to palm fronds rustle in the breeze.
Our daughter wants to sunbathe, and our son wants to hang out outside of the house, and I want options, so I bring my new backpack down so I can read or sketch or write — whatever I feel like doing as I relax into the total empty space of time when I get to choose whatever I want to do.
One day, I drew a palm tree. Both days, I read. I started out upright in a normal chair with my feet on the ground and my water bottle on the side table next to me. After a couple of chapters, I’d feel warm and golden, like honey. I’d feel tired of bing upright, so I’d move to a lounge chair to get more horizontal. I’d read a few more pages, and I’d feel the heat of the sun on my skin and on the hair on the crown of my head. It was so soothing and comforting. I’d get that delicious drowsy feeling. That’s one of my favorite feelings, to feel sleepy in the sun and know that I have the leisure to close my eyes and lean into it if I want. I’d put my book down on the stone pool deck, take off my glasses and set them on my book, lay my cheek on my arms on the lounge chair, put my hat over my face, and fall asleep in the warm winter sun.
We’re visiting family in Florida. Yesterday, I woke early to walk on the beach before it got boiling hot. I took my camera with me, and it turns out I didn’t end up walking very much. I wanted to play with some of the basics I’m learning in my photography class — motion, leading lines, contrast — so I ended up stopping every few feet to snap photos. I also wanted to mix it up a little with my photographs; I’ve got a thousand shots of the Gulf of Mexico being the Gulf of Mexico in it’s beautiful blues and greens. I switched to black and white, and I had fun capturing the beach in a totally different way.
I started a new photography blog to help me curate some of my favorite photos and also track the camera settings on them so I can learn. It’s at photo.andreabadgley.blog if you’re interested.
We started our day watching the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. We were in Cocoa Beach on the east coast of Florida, and we took one last walk on the beach before driving across the state. We ended our day on the west coast of Florida, where we watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.
Sunrise: Cocoa Beach, Florida
Before sunrise, when my lens was fogged from leaving the air conditioned room. Atlantic coast of Florida.Ibis at sunrise, Atlantic coast of Florida
Sunset: Siesta Beach, Florida
Thundercloud before sunset. Gulf coast of Florida.
Every time I lift my left shoulder, I grimace. Same when I step out of the car. Or if I touch my ribs where they pressed against the surfboard when I paddled. Or the front of my right shin where the leash wrapped around and yanked on one of my spectacular falls. My toenail polish is chipped and needs to come off. The second toe on my left foot has a red blister on top of it from rubbing the board.
My body is beat up, and each ache reminds me of the fun we had taking surf lessons at Cocoa Beach earlier this week.
When we arrived on Tuesday, the lifeguard stands flew red flags. The wind blew 10-15 miles per hour from the Atlantic Ocean straight onto shore. It made a mess of the waves. It looked kind of scary out there, not really the easy baby waves I was hoping for. We weren’t sure if our lessons would be canceled. They were not.
We practiced popping up on a demo board in the parking lot: hands under your chest, fingers facing forward; push up, get your feet underneath you, shoulder width-ish apart, perpendicular to the long line of the board. We carried the surf school’s 9′ and 10′ beginner boards on our heads the two blocks to the beach. The waves were white water, and they roared so that we had to yell over them. The surf wasn’t huge, necessarily, just powerful. It looked like a washing machine on agitate.
Getting out through the crashing waves wore me out that first day, especially after I wiped out a couple dozen times, got tumbled underwater with salt water blasting up my nostrils, and then toted a giant foam board through surf that wanted to carry it and my body the opposite direction from where I wanted to go each time I needed to get out to the swells to try again. My eyes burned. In the space behind my eyes, I felt the pressure of the entire Atlantic Ocean; it stung and pounded in my sinuses from all the salt water I’d inhaled.
After an hour of “surfing,” I couldn’t see through my puffy, bloodshot eyes, and my body felt jiggly like gelatin. Any semblance of upright balance was purely accidental on that first day. I managed to get up and stay up a few times, but it was pure luck and I never felt like I had anything in hand. How many times had our instructor Calvin told me, “Eyes up!” “Don’t grab the rails or you’ll tip!” “Plant your feet!” “Bend your knees!” “More weight on your front foot!” “Your arms are windmilling!”
And still. Afterward I was filled with a sort of glee. I couldn’t wait to get back out Wednesday to go again. We checked the weather forecast over and over. Was the wind was still predicted to be slightly lower tomorrow? Yes? Awesome.
Wednesday morning I woke early and walked on the beach at sunrise. I saw surfers in the water a few blocks down from our Airbnb and I watched them pop up. They did it in one motion rather than a sequence of steps like warrior pose in yoga, which is what I was doing. I went back to our room and practiced popping up on the floor.
When we arrived for our second lesson, the wind was 5-10mph instead of 10-15, and there was still chop, but the swells more parallel, the space between them more chill, and getting out through them was easy; I slid onto my sore ribs on the board and paddled out instead of getting whacked in the face every 2 seconds. I wouldn’t have had the arm strength to paddle through the washing machine the first day — I had to trudge through on foot lifting the nose or tail over each wave and then hanging onto the board to keep it from getting ripped away from me.
I spent the first 15 minutes falling, over and over again, just like the day before. After one particular nosedive, Calvin told me “You popped up great on that, and then your eyes went straight to your feet.” On my next push, he said “Keep your eyes up” for the billionth time, and I did. No matter what was happening below me, I kept my eyes on the clouds above the horizon, and I popped up, and the board wiggled, and I adjusted my feet, and I stabilized, and I rode the wave all the way in. Before I stepped off the board, I threw my hands up and yelled “Woohoo!”
I paddled back to our instructor with a huge grin plastered across my face, and I said, “I did something on that one! That one felt right!”
“Yeaah, that was killer!”, he said. “You were surfing!”
Now I understand why surfers chase waves. It is So. Much. Fun. The rest of the hour went by too fast. After the killer wave, I managed a few more, though still with the instructor’s help. When we got the boards back to the School of Surf parking lot, we wanted to sign up for another lesson before we left town. I still have so much to learn and so much practicing to do! I didn’t choose or paddle into waves on my own. None of the instructors had any openings left before we left town, though. It was probably for the best anyway because I think our bodies might need to recover a bit. As Wednesday progressed, we each discovered new and deeper aches and pains.
As we drove away from Cocoa Beach this morning, my eyes stung with emotion rather than salt water. I didn’t like leaving.
Ron Jon looks a little different from when we stopped on my childhood vacations to Florida
For the first time since the kids were born 15 years ago, we awoke on Christmas morning away from home. Instead of driving down to visit family the day after Christmas like we normally do, we decided that since the Virginia to Florida drive is so long (16 hours), we would show up on Christmas Eve instead. The stay is too short for that many hours of driving if we wait. The kids are big enough that they didn’t mind being away this once.
Reading, barefooted, on the lanai in December
We relaxed in sunshine. We saw grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. We ate lots of food, visited lots of family. We gabbed. We swam. We shopped. We walked a marina during the day and the beach at sunset.
Moored sailboats in Sarasota Bay
Sunset, Siesta Key, Christmas Day
Siesta Key sunset on our final night in Florida
We looked for seashells.
Seashells on Siesta Beach
One of the unexpected gems of this Christmas was the beautiful blown crystal martini glasses my mother-in-law pulled out of a blue Tiffany & Co. box on Christmas Eve. They keep all sorts of good gin at their house — Aviation, Hendricks, Tanqueray — and in addition to all the visiting, beaching, shopping, and other merriment, a highlight of the trip for me was drinking fine gin martinis out of Tiffany glasses.
Over the past week on vacation in Florida, I have fallen in love again. With wind, with sea, with freedom, with language. But most importantly, with time. I have fallen in love with personal time to care for my body, to dream, to think about what’s important in life.
As a result, on this first day of the new year, as I feel the cool Gulf breeze on my bare arms, listen to it rustle the banana leaves, brush sand from my toes, and smile at the kids anteing up as they play poker with Grandma, I’ve decided that for 2017, I’m not making resolutions. I don’t have specific goals for my personal life. I’m not setting a number of books to read or a number of pounds to lose.
Instead, I resolve to feel like this:
The Gulf of Mexico
Footprints on our morning walk along the Gulf
Sailing on Sarasota Bay
On this trip, as I watched our 68 and 70-year-old sailing instructors move spryly about the 22 foot sailboat, it struck me: I want to still be able to move that easily and feel that alive when I am in my 60s and 70s (and 80s and 90s).
So if I have any objective this year, it is this: enjoy life and remain active, not for vanity, but so that my body feels good and lasts while I do all this living.
Happy 2017. May you enjoy life now and long into the future.
Butterfly Mind 