Goin' South

As I mentioned earlier, I loved our Sunday drives in Maude (the old red station wagon), so you can imagine my joy at being awakened in the middle of the night, not for a beer party as usual, but for a ride in Maude!  The mood seemed a bit tense and nervous but I was 5 so I just figured it was some big surprise, wherever we were going, and I was damned excited about it!  Fourteen or twenty hours later the excitement had worn off.

Maude was sure packed for some big trip and everyone seemed to know our destination but me.  As we drove, scenery changed, accents changed, the mood changed.  At one point we got out of the car to eat and I had no idea what the kind lady was saying to me.  Mom had to repeat everything the woman said to me in my language. Had we driven to a foreign country? Well for a little girl who'd grown up in New York, yes, the deep south was a foreign country.  "Whah ain't yooou cyooter thayun uh squahruhl's ay-yur," was translated as "She said you're cute, Jenny."  To which I replied, "thank you." (I'm not sure if she understood me either because she just smiled kind of vacantly).  Order taking and giving was impossible so I just accepted whatever was ordered and brought to me and mostly wasn't sure what I was eating.  Oh, except the Mr. Peeyub (Pibb), which I had never tasted or even heard of and loved at first sip.  The only thing I understood and repeated the entire rest of our trip was, "Y'all come bayuck nah, ya hear?"  I loved it but just couldn't understand why everyone understood them but me--had I missed some sort of language instruction?

It was somewhere around North Carolina that we were informed (or maybe it was just me, I think everyone else was privvy to this information already) of our destination.  Dad said we were going to see Meme (Mom's mom) in Florida and that he'd give a dollar to the first person who spotted a palm tree (this would make it great fun I'm sure he thought). I was up for the challenge even though I had no idea what a palm tree was or looked like but damn it I looked and looked for any kind of tree that looked different than the others.  I think one of my brothers saw the first one, then, of course, that's all we saw the rest of the way down and I burned the image into my mind in case I was ever asked to spot one again. 

When I realized this wasn't just a day trip I began to panic inside--my bagee(pronounced like baggy but the emphasis on the end rather than the beginning)--my bagee, my beloved 'Linus' blanket was home on my bed.  I mentioned it, trying not to sound too anxious, and I was told the movers would be brining it down.  Movers???  We're moving?  I didn't say goodbye to anyone.  My toys.  My stuff.  I hadn't packed anything. It was to be the first of many sly, in-the-middle-of-the-night moves to avoid confrontation at not having paid rent to a landlord.

My first experience of Florida was our first stop, probably about half-way down the state.  It must have been June because I had just finished Kindergarten.  The air in the car had been on full blast.  Ever been in Florida in June?  The weather never changes from June to August--they call it the three H's: hazy, hot and humid.  When I got out of the car I was hit with pure panic because there was no air to breathe.  I had never, in all my five years, experienced air so thick (made thicker by the air-conditioning I had been breathing in the car up to this point).  I had a little inner mental breakdown--no bagee, no toys, no clothes, no AIR?  How could we live here?  How did people survive with no air to breathe?  Gary told me I would get used to it, but for the first time in my life, I did not believe him.

We got to Meme's, I got used to the air, and the lizards, and the smell of the salty, fishy ocean, and no toys, and the same clothes day after day.  I never, however, got used to no bagee.  Boxes did actually arrive from NY.  I waited every day for them.  Mom thought I would forget about my security blanket.  The yellow one with silk edges that I would wrap around my finger and rub across the bottom of my nose.  It wasn't in any of the boxes.  It's been 35 years and I still haven't forgotten.  Whew, how scary for the only security I had in life to be gone.  Now I had nothing to fall back on but me and my own strength.  No silk edges to smooth across my nose and calm me or ease my anxiety.  No, just my strength and spirit, which I think have served me well.  Again, a small rock, but a large current in my brook's symphony.

Jen ;-)