I unfolded the paper slip from my prompt box today, and on it was written “half-dressed.” This of course made me think of our recent trip to South Beach in Miami, where “half-dressed” is a generous description of the people we saw from our various perches around town. Quarter-dressed, or in many cases, tenth-dressed is more appropriate.
Sadly (or maybe happily) for you, I don’t have pictures of all the nine-tenths-naked bodies we saw. However, pulling the prompt made me realize that I never wrote about or published any photographs from our trip. And this trip was significant: it was the first time my husband and I have spent more than one night alone together since our first child was born almost 12 years ago.
We stayed The Angler’s, a small hotel off the main strip so that we could relax into quiet if we needed to, and we were thrilled to have our little oasis to return to after walks on the beach or around town.
Sea grapes and South Beach tower
Bright umbrellas
Starlight on the strip
Pretty water
Art Deco lighthouse
We walked on the beach, lay by the pool and drank wine and cocktails, wandered the boardwalks and sidewalks by day and by night, ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired, visited an art museum, went out on dates every breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The art deco architecture was refreshing — so much different from what we’re used to in southwest Virginia, and we particularly loved the bright life guard stands.
Lifeguard stand, South Beach, MiamiLifeguard stand with clouds, Miami BeachLifeguard stand, South Beach, MiamiLooking out to sea, Miami Beach, Florida
Did I mention it was amazing? Hopefully it won’t be another 12 years before we take a trip together again.
Thank you to sapel2013 for the prompt “half-dressed.”
Cloud with rainbow over Gulf of Mexico. Anna Maria Island, FL.
Clouds are my favorite thing about Florida. They are the part I miss most after living there, and the part I love most when we visit. I thought I’d share some with you here. Enjoy.
Morning clouds. Anna Maria Island, FL.Cotton puffs over Gulf of Mexico.Evening light through storm clouds
Morning clouds over Gulf of Mexico, Anna Maria Island, FL
I’m on the porch at a condo at the beach listening to seagulls and a construction crew’s country music station. We are on vacation. While we’re here, I’ll attempt to keep from vacating my blog altogether. I don’t know that I’ll have anything sensical to say, but maybe I can post some pretty pictures.
Today I braided our daughter’s hair. She is growing her bangs out, and they are at that stage where they are too long to leave hanging but still to short to tuck behind her ear. I attempted a French braid on one side to tidy the scraggly strands, and with her hair pulled back, her face is bright. I cannot stop gazing at her tawny tanned skin, and gold-flecked hazel eyes, and honey blonde hair against her crisp white shirt as she sits on her grandmother’s lap. She is golden and summery, innocent and beautiful, and I wish I could stop time, to stay in this moment of her childhood forever.
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The sky is blue again now that the storm blew through. Palm fronds sway gently and white puffs drift across the sky. Morning is my favorite time of day on vacation. I sip coffee on the balcony while my family sleeps in. I watch the sky and listen to wind in the palms. Mourning doves coo, and in the distance, waves pound the beach. Across the street, a screen door slaps shut behind a woman with a corn broom. In a white crushed-shell yard shaded by palms and broad banana leaves, she sweeps her walk. Her husband pushes open the screen door, and it slaps shut behind him, too. He stands on the welcome mat and sips coffee from a curved white mug to be in her company. They do not speak, and their faces are smooth and relaxed as they absorb the quiet morning. Broom corn bristles swiff across red brick, and I love the scouring sound. It is rustic, and welcoming, and I am glad she chose the gentle broom instead of a roaring leaf blower.
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It is our final day of vacation. I drink coffee on the beach, my feet buried in sand, in a low rainbow-striped folding chair, the kind with aluminum tubing and a seat that brushes the sand when you sit in it. Sitting in the cool shade of an Australian pine, early enough that morning sun behind me casts the tree’s shadow across the beach and into waves, I look across blue-green chop to the horizon. The wind coming off the Gulf of Mexico blows the brim of my straw hat up in front, and white puffs of clouds float over the sea. I think of Ernest Hemingway, and how well he wrote these waters in his Key West and Cuba days. I envy his fiction, that he had stories to accompany this backdrop, drama to set upon this stage. An excuse to capture this landscape in an art that transcends time. I wish, as I sit and absorb the scene, that I had such stories in me.
One of the things I love most about Florida, that I miss when I’m away, and that I fall in love with all over again when I return, is the sky. More specifically, I love the clouds. Cloudscapes in Florida are dynamic and dependable. Nearly every afternoon in summer, formations build before your eyes in a blue sky, their faces to the brilliant Florida sun. The piles are clean and bright, like bleached cotton, and you can actually watch them grow, billowy cumulus clouds piling up like a massive mound of shaving cream in a crystalline sky. Variations of light on the clouds are dramatic, ranging from a blinding white on the uppermost billows to an ominous blue black on their low underbellies.
Every day, the clouds are different. Sometimes they are far away, and they move across the sky like giant jellyfish, trailing rain like dark gray tentacles. Other times you watch them grow, you feel the wind pick up as they become cumulonimbus storm clouds, sucking air into their growing system, and you wonder, is that coming our way?
And then that blue-black underbelly is right there,and it blots out the sun. The temperature drops. The menacing cloud is low, right above you. You can see details of its texture, and there is a sense of immediacy – the cloud isn’t over there, where I can watch it from afar. It is right here, like that tree and this lizard, and like me.
A bolt of lightning blinds you, and a clap of thunder cracks, and you feel the ground and your chest vibrate with the impact. Maybe you’ll get scared if you’re outside, and you’ll run for cover. If you’re inside you watch rain pelt hot asphalt and green palm fronds. The storm will crash violently, with thunder and lightning and rain so heavy you have to pull off the highway if you’re driving in it.
Ten minutes later, maybe twenty, it will all be over. The road will steam. The palm fronds will glisten. The sky will clear for sunset, leaving a few cloud remnants, maybe some high cirrus feathers, to reflect pinks and oranges of the sun’s fiery farewell as it drops below the horizon.
And then, you forget about clouds for a while. At least until the next day, when you see a couple of white puffs here and there in the morning. And at 2 o’clock you look inland, and you see a curve of white above palm trees, a great dollop of cloud that grows before your eyes, and you pause in what you’re doing to watch the show.
Gulf of Mexico on a June morning, Anna Maria Island, Florida
Last night, after drinking rum drinks all afternoon, I announced to my husband, “I’m going for a run in the morning.” I rubbed my bloated belly. I packed everything I need for running – shoes, shorts, sports bras, iPod, running watch – and after a week of vacation eating (and drinking), and after a gluttonous day at Disney, all my gear still lay unused on the floor of the closet.
“Okaaay,” he said.
“Just saying it out loud so I’ll do it.”
I woke with the first rays of the sun, pulled on my running clothes, and sneaked silently out of our still sleeping condo. I headed across the street, away from the beach, started my stopwatch, and picked my feet up into a run. Poinciana trees and frangipani are in bloom on Anna Maria Island, and I ran neighborhood streets to see the lush greens and bright flowers of tropical plants. I often run on the beach while we’re here because I feel like I should – I always see runners on the beach and think, “Wow, what an idyllic place to run. Look at the scenery!” But the fact is, when I run on the beach my socks fill with sand, the slope hurts my ankles, and my heels sink in the softness, making the already arduous task of running even more annoying. Plus, it’s kind of torturous to be so hot and sweaty and miserable with all that turquoise water right next to me tempting me to abandon the run and just go swimming.
I jogged to the other side of the island – only about three blocks – to Marina Drive and ran up and down fingers of land separated by canals. Brown anole lizards skittered across driveways in the soft morning light, and a scarab beetle inched its way across 69th Street. I felt like the beetle when I looked at my watch and saw I had only been running 11 minutes.
Sweat trickled down my back as the sun rose over palm trees and its already strong rays struck my skin. I focused on oleander bushes in islanders’ yards and remembered of the oleanders my mom always grew on the coast of Georgia. Their fragrance was cool and sweet today in the warm morning air. I surveyed landscaping strategies as I ran by each home. The plants reminded me of landscaping our homes when we lived in Florida, of swiping sweat from our foreheads as we wandered native plant nurseries, piling coonties and porterweed, milkweed and firebushes onto our green pull cart.
When I finally turned around to head back to the condo, I started thinking about my reward for running on vacation. I ducked under the broad round leaves of an overhanging sea grape and trotted through St. Augustine grass to the docks along Marina Drive. I’ll take my hat off first, then my iPod and watch. I’ll hide those in my hat so nobody steals them. I glanced in the water between boat slips and saw a red hibiscus flower floating on the dark glassy surface. I looked beneath a dock and saw another, then another. They reminded me of Chinese lanterns floating down a river.
Then I’ll peel of my shoes, and then my socks. I passed a boat named Hanky Panky and smiled. A hibiscus flower floated next to it. The scene made me want to listen to Jimmy Buffett and drink more rum. Sweat trickled from my hair-line down my jaw. Only two more blocks til I earn my prize. I gasped in the hot sun. I’ll take my hair down, so it won’t get tangled in the elastic.
Finally, as soon as my feet launched off the sidewalk of 72nd Street and landed on the asphalt of Gulf Drive, I stopped running. I panted and shook sweat off my arms as I walked across to the condo parking lot. I yanked off my hat and pulled ear buds out of my ear. I nestled my watch and iPod in my hat as I walked the short block over bleached pavement to the beach. At the edge of a sandy path through the dunes, I peeled off my running shoes, then my socks. I pulled my hair from its ponytail and made a little pile of belongings at the base of a sand dune. Then I walked across white sand into the beryl waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The water soothed my Disney-sore feet, and as soon as I was knee-deep, I dove in. My nylon running shorts fluttered underwater and I turned onto my back, my face to the morning sun. At 7:30 am, the beach was empty, and I was the only person in the water.
I floated in the calm sea, my palms up, my feet dangling, and the cool water was a balm on my hot skin. The Gulf was the perfect refreshment after a hot summer run in Florida, and I could feel my core temperature come down as the sea chilled my scalp. The salt water buoyed me, and I bobbed gently without any effort on my part. My hair drifted around my head, and with my ears underwater, I heard the muffled sloshing of wavelets on sand. I opened my eyes as I floated there and saw white terns swoop overhead. Laughing gulls, with black heads and black wing tips, circled and dived. I turned my head toward shore and saw a great blue heron idle near a fisherman’s bucket. A white ibis, with a curved orange bill, glided over the shallows to join it.
I floated there silently for a long time, alone in the cool calm of morning, blue sky above, blue water beneath, white sand to receive me when I was done. The reason I bring my running shoes. My reward for exercising on vacation.
Butterfly Mind 