Florida Through My Years - Part II: 1970-1976

Hallandale was where we went now

every year

for our vacation in the winter.

We flew,

and we did the same things

every time.

We drove from the airport to

my grandparents’ apartment,

I shoved my clothes into the bottom drawer,

and then I begged to go to the pool.

The Tropical Sun was always there,

the afternoons were always spent wishing for time in the pool,

the nighttimes were spent in air conditioning

with the windows closed.

I couldn’t smell Florida

or hear the tree frogs,

and Lulu told us
she wanted to be called Grandma.

One year

my mother brought me to Florida

when it wasn’t vacation.

I had to bring my homework with me.

Math.

And I couldn’t go in the pool until I’d done my homework.

Every morning.

I couldn’t do math when I was at school,

and I couldn’t do it when I wasn’t at school.

And my mother couldn’t do math.

She sat with me every morning at a table covered by an umbrella by the pool

and watched over me while I did something in my math book

that I didn’t understand

and she couldn’t help with.

The mockingbirds chee cheed and yip yipped in the fir trees,

the tiny lizards skittered across the pool deck.

I filled in boxes with a pencil, until

I could go in the pool.

One year
my brother and I flew down to Florida

by ourselves.

We swam and played shuffleboard and he slept on the screened porch, 

and we found a coconut on the sidewalk

that had fallen from a palm tree

and we dropped it

over and over again

from the second floor of our grandparents’ apartment building

onto the driveway
until it cracked open.
It had ants in it.

One year
my grandmother treated my brother and a new Florida friend

to a day at Disney World

that had just opened

and they went for the day while I stayed in Hallandale,

and they came back and told about the Presidents Hall

and the Haunted House and It’s a Small World and the parade,

and I’d gone swimming at the pool alone,

and missed my brother.

One year 
my grandmother knew I wished I could go to Disney World

and she woke me up at three in the morning

and we took a bus to Orlando,

just the two of us.
The bus had curtains that closed

and windows that opened,

and we rode through orange groves.

I could smell the blossoms
through the windows.

We went to the Haunted Mansion and the Hall of Presidents

and sang It’s a Small World  because there was no way not to,

and hummed it to each other on the bus ride home

in the late afternoon.

My grandmother with her sore knee

took me on the longest

and best

day trip I’d ever been on.

One year 
I flew down with my parents and

they left me with my grandmother

and went off somewhere else.

I slept in the sleep sofa
and my grandmother and I watched The Waltons

while she knit

and I ate chocolate ice cream I’d stirred into cold pudding,

and the tree frogs sang

because she left the door open to the screen porch.

Goodnight, Johnboy,

Goodnight, grandma lady.

One year 
my grandmother made a friend for me.
This is Deena. Her grandmother lives over there.
She’d be a nice friend,

she whispered loudly.

The only things we knew we had in common were

school vacation and

we were girls

and we were 10.

She’d come into the pool

if I begged,

and if she didn’t have hives.

Usually, when she wasn’t at the pool,

it was because she was soaking in an oatmeal bath.

Is Deena coming to the pool?

I’d ask her grandmother.

Not today,

she has hives.

Hives.

Please come in the pool, Deena,

it’s so boring by myself.

Can’t, just finished a bath.

I have hives.

But when she didn’t,

we had tea parties at the bottom of the pool

and practiced our handstands.

We even found a boy to play with

who was our age and

who had eyes the same color as the ocean

out Aunt Sara’s and Uncle Sam's apartment window, and

who had a little brother who liked to run after him.

When we weren't swimming
we ran through all the buildings

in my grandparents’ apartment complex,

peering around corners

like boys like to do,

after hidden secrets and adventures

we didn’t understand

but played,

until someone said we were wild

and shouldn’t

and told our grandmothers.

One year 
Nettie Meyers’ three granddaughters came

and sat on the lawn

where no one ever sat

since there were shez longs everywhere

and the grass was itchy and had lizards.

But they sat there

with their legs folded to their sides

like I’d learned to do in ballet class,

so I sat too

and hoped they’d want to swim with me,

or that they’d notice me.

But they had each other,

and I was shy.

Every year

at night,
we’d meet my grandparents’ friends for dinner

at their country clubs

and I'd hope to ride with
Aunt Sara and Uncle Sam 
who would pick us up

in their Cadillac

that had windows that went down

by pushing a button

(I wasn't allowed to push

because the air conditioning was on
and you're letting in the hot air),

and ashtrays on the armrest

with lighters in them

that glowed red

to light cigarettes
if you pushed them down
(I wasn't allowed to push them down
you'll get a burn).

At the country club
I was too cold

because of the air conditioning

and my sunburn.

I wore a cardigan draped over my shoulders and held together at the neck

by a gold beaded chain 
Grandma gave me,

made especially
to hold cardigan sweaters together

on old people

without having to put my arms through the sleeves.

Dinners out took so long

and I had to stay at the table
with no bathroom to entertain myself
since I had to please stay at the table
so I wouldn't get lost,

and finally

my mother and grandma and all the other ladies

would take out their lipstick from their pocketbooks

and put it on

at the table,

a few smudges of red lines

and some smushing together of their lips

and some dabbing away with tissues

and looking at themselves

in the tiny mirrors

that clipped on to their lipstick tubes

and then I knew
we could go.

My grandfather stood up first
every time

and said Alright? Are we ready?

Yup! I popped up out of my seat

like a slice of toast

from the toaster.

Every year
at the end of Hallandale,
we drove back to the airport,
my tote bag filled with shells
and dead seahorses,
hugged my grandparents goodbye,
see you in summer,
and flew back
to where there was snow,
and math,
and no pool.

Florida Through My Years - Part 1: 1969

We flew to visit my grandparents who had just moved to Hallandale

from Watertown where they were old.  

My grandfather had gray skin,

my grandmother had a broken knee.

I was 6.

We left from Boston before the sun came up,

flying,

my first trip on a big plane.

It was Christmas vacation,

but I went to a Jewish day school,

so it was just vacation.

My grandmother always sent tote bags for presents.

She thought these made good presents.

They were plastic

and smelled good

and new

and each one had a decoration that was different

but they were all still tote bags.

I packed one for the plane

with Malibu Barbie and her wardrobe,

a gold dress

a pair of plastic pink high heels

and an ugly dress someone knit

left over from my sister’s Nurse Julia Barbie doll.

I didn’t love Barbie

as much as I had when I got her

since I’d painted Barbie’s nipples with brownish nail polish

and cut her hair

in preparation for our trip.

I sat in the window seat, Barbie sat on the windowsill

looking out at the clouds.

I colored and we ate our meal,

and my mother put the metal spoons and butter knives and plastic dishes

into her bag

and asked the stewardess for a deck of cards

which we didn’t play with,

that joined the utensils in her tote bag.

We walked down the metal steps of the plane

into Florida warmth,

breezes and bright sun

in our drab wool.

My grandmother was there

in her summer clothes

and a tan,

and the ride to their home was short.

My grandparents’ new apartment was on the second floor

of a building with only two floors.

The stairs to get there were outside,

like a motel.

All their furniture from Watertown was there

and a few new things

like the round glass kitchen table

with small chairs with white vinyl cushions

that were too cold to sit on in shorts.

I saw their beds and their armchairs

and the round table with the drawer

that held my grandmother’s sewing needles and thread

and the TV clicker.

My grandmother had emptied out a drawer

for each of us

in a long bureau

for our clothes.

I sat on the floor, opened the drawer at the bottom,

And pushed all my clothes inside.

My grandmother offered oranges and grapefruit

cut up in a bowl.

My parents sat and visited

and it was warm outside

where I wanted to be

at the pool

I could see from the screened in porch.

No one else seemed to want to go.

Instead they sat in chairs in the living room and talked

about the plane ride and

knees

and fruit.

In a half hour we'll go to the pool. You just ate,

she said,

even though I only had a piece of rye bread

with soft butter.

I opened my newly filled bottom drawer

to find my bathing suit

and ran to change

in the fanciest

and biggest bathroom I’d ever seen.

This one had a door that hid in the wall

and slid closed,

and a closet inside it with another door that closed the same way

where all of my grandmother’s clothes were,

so I could get dressed in private,

and when I opened the closet door

I was right there looking at myself in the huge mirror.

There was a light switch that turned on a million lightbulbs around the mirror

and another one for a red bulb over my head that made the room warm

and another for a fan that was loud.

The countertop near the sink was filled with lotions and lipsticks

and powder

and the floor was soft with shite carpet.

I changed into my suit

in the private closet,

ta-dah! I presented myself in the mirror.

I arrived back in the living room where no one had moved.

I stood there on the rug, in my yellow suit, waiting for a volunteer

to take me to the pool.

Grandma did.

I called her Lulu.

She got into her bathing suit

and covered it with a housedress

with big faded flowers on it,

made me put on

No-Name suntan lotion

and gave me a tote bag to put Barbie and my towel in.

She walked me down the stairs

and led me out the door to the pool.

We laid our towels on two long chairs

she told me were called shez longs,

tucking the ends in under the plastic slats so they wouldn’t blow away,

and I put on the bathing cap she made me wear.

It was hers,

and had rubber daisies on it that flapped in the breeze

and snapped under the chin,

and I felt silly.

We walked together to the edge of the pool.

My grandmother was cautious,

her knee newly mended.

a line of scar across her kneecap

like she'd drawn it on herself with a red pen.

She held the railing,

and I left her there on the steps

and slithered into the water

like a seal at the aquarium.

I crawled and dog paddled,

I plunged myself to the bottom of the pool

to sit and have a tea party,

then sprang to the surface for air,

Then dove in like a duck

To show off my handstand.

Show me how you really swim, she said.

I did. I was.

Flutter kick.  Backstroke. Handstand.

I stayed in the pool as long as I could

before she told me to come out.

Your lips are blue. Your fingers are like prunes.

Too much sun.
The tropical sun is much stronger.

I didn’t know what a tropical sun was

and if it was a different one that the one at home.

But I came out to lie down on my towel

and let the drips dry.

The bright orange from the sun

burned through my eyelids

and I saw patterns in my eyes

like the kaleidoscope in my room at home.

I listened.

The birds cackled and nagged,

old people walked past our chairs

and my grandmother told them

we were visiting from Maine

where it was so cold, they all knew.

Aren’t you lucky to have your family visit, they said.

I am, she said.

We headed back into the apartment

so my grandmother could make supper.

She sprinkled paprika on to pale pieces of chicken,

and then

took a sharp comb to my wet hair

and made a part with the end

and tugged my hair

into painful pigtails.

I went back to the moviestar bathroom

to change.

Then we had dinner,

long dinner.

Long dinner where no one talked to me

and I didn’t listen to their conversation

and I didn't eat pale chicken.

I left the table for the bathroom

where I knew I could stay

and no one would come look for me.

I slid the door closed,

lit the mirror,

sang Petula Clark from the closet to imaginary people.

I looked in all the drawers,

took a little Dixie cup Lulu kept stacked near the sink and mixed in

lotion and red nail polish and shampoo and toothpaste and mouthwash and foot powder

and stirred it with a stick my grandmother used for

something to do with her nails.  

(She called it an orange stick even though it wasn’t.)

Pink paste that smelled like minty flowers.

Then I threw it away in the wastebasket, hiding it under tissues.

I arrived back at the dining room table where no one had moved.

There was jello mold for dessert. Green.

With pineapple in it.

My parents slept in the new sofa that turned into a bed in the living room.

My brother got to sleep on the screened porch off the living room that overlooked the pool.

He could listen to the tree frogs and

not have any rules.

I slept on a small cot my grandmother borrowed

and placed in their room.

I had a windowsill next to me

for Barbie.

I slept alongside my grandfather whose eyelids had little bumps near his stubby lashes.

and flipped inside out while he slept.

Our vacation days were all mostly

the same.

Every morning I ate a Lender’s bagel in a hurry,

just wanting to go to the pool.

I sat in the small kitchen

in my bathingsuit

my thighs stuck to the cold vinyl chair

while my grandmother stood at the counter

and drank coffee from her percolator,

and pool time went by.

She said I couldn’t go to the pool without a grownup.

I waited for her to do whatever was keeping her from taking me,

talking to friends on the phone,

in the kitchen in one of the vinyl chairs,

twisting and untwisting the long phone cord,

drumming her painted red nails on the glass tabletop.

She dilly dallied,

taking a bite of toast,

looking into kitchen cabinets for things she talked to herself about.

She kept the kitchen door open

so her friends could stop by.

Mrs. Warshauer from next door,

Nettie Meyers from a few doors down,

Esther Levine who gave me a necklace and who painted.

They were all new friends she’d made in Florida,

they were all old and looked alike.

My father was somewhere,

my mother was elsewhere,

and I waited.

Every lunchtime, I wasn’t allowed

to go to the pool.

No pool in the middle of the day

because of the Tropical Sun.

That’s when we went to the fruit stand for bags of oranges and

grapefruit to send home,

or when we’d rest indoors in the dullness,

or we went to Nettie Meyer’s country club

for air conditioned lunch

or we went to Aunt Sara and Uncle Sam’s apartment

in a highrise with a balcony I wasn’t allowed on,

that looked down on a beach they never went to,

with a pool they didn’t swim in,

and sat inside

on their white furniture.

Some days my grandfather helped me wait out the no pool time.

He taught me how to play shuffleboard,

and he’d play Go Fish with me

and War which went on for longer than either of us could stand,

and he took me for a walk down the street in the heat

past other apartment buildings

where other people’s grandparents lived,

to the mall

for a cone of orange sherbet.

In the late afternoon,

finally,

my grandmother

would take me back to the pool.

I’d put on my damp suit

and she'd take her knitting

and sit with the other women under

the awning by the pool.

They all knit together and talked

and my grandmother knit

on small needles

with sequins.

She could knit without looking,

my lifeguard in a housedress,

and I went back in the pool

until my lips turned blue.

At the end of the vacation

we flew back home

in our drab clothes,

me with my tote bag filled with shells

Lulu had bought for me a the shell store

by the airport,

and some dead seahorses,

with their perfect horse heads

and spiral tails,

stiff like dried out raisins,

closed up in a sandwich bag,

and Barbie with her bad haircut 

looking out the window.