Florida, oddly enough
Some 10 minutes from my apartment is an old-Florida style 25 room hotel called Shangri-La Springs. It has a spa, a magnesium mineral spring, and an organic restaurant, none of which I've been to, and one beautiful recently renovated guestroom. They are in the process of opening more rooms this fall, and I'm hoping my ex-mother-in-law will come to stay there this winter and visit me. I love Jean, loved my first ex-mother-in-law, too, sometimes more than their sons, and I bet I'm not alone in that feeling. I'm new to Florida. I came here on July 4, 2018, from Ohio, the eastern border of the midwest. Florida is gorgeous, no denying it, and doomed, at least the bottom half, but, hey, it's purple now (politically), good news! Hot as hell, for real. But the birds, plants, clouds, ocean...magnifique. Orange blossoms scent the air for miles and miles in March. In February, this is the place to be. Extremely pleasant, most people agree. These months are bleak in the midwest and most snowbirds are well ensconced in sunny Florida by then. It was May when I visited Shangri-La Springs, right after moving from my mom's house and getting my apartment. The photo below is of one of the two huge Mysore fig trees on the property of the hotel. Old 41 goes through the center of Bonita Springs, and you cannot miss this pretty white hotel that sits along the Imperial River. Beautiful buildings interest me, so do tiny rivers and places named after exotic locales. It's hard to say no to places or things called Shangri-La, Camelot, or El Dorado, even if the food is mediocre, the beds lumpy, and the car isn't that good-looking and guzzles gas. I had to explore this spot and wondered how to do it without booking a pricy spa day. Soon after, I saw an ad for a guided meditation to be held in the garden house of the hotel on the following Saturday. I took my yoga mat and headed over there that day, hoping to be refreshed in body and spirit and satisfy my curiosity about this pretty little hotel off the Imperial River.
Well, it was a mediocre experience, the guided meditation. My mat was thin on the hard floor. This relaxing exercise was not restful at all. I could hardly wait until it was over. Nothing new under the sun was said. Nothing inspirational, even. I did resolve to never pay for this kind of experience again, so, a small win, I guess. Afterward, though, I strolled the grounds in the heat and found two huge beautiful trees. Trees with... monkeys. Smiling wide, I tried to figure out if they told a story, like, monkey see, monkey do, but nothing stood out, that I knew of. Well, this was a definite improvement. Someone had placed money statues all around the lower limbs of the tree. I am charmed. Monkeys and me, we go back. Back to the postcards, my grandfather wrote after my mom took us grandkids to St. Louis from South Carolina in 1967.
Each told a one-paragraph story portraying my brother as a monkey in a zoo: getting sick on bananas, tormenting the ladies from my grandmother's bridge club, getting jealous of the lions. Later after my son was born, he became a monkey companion to my brother. I cherished these, and still have a batch of them, yellowing in an old tin box. The monkey tree made up for an hour of hard floored misery. I ignored the heat and continued to explore the premises. The air smelled a little bad, like a gas stove when the pilot's gone out, but not exactly. A groundskeeper told me it was magnesium I was smelling. I should have asked if it is possible to still bathe in the spring. I went into the empty hotel gift shop and got a tour of the one renovated room. Gorgeous. I bet this place was stunning in 1935. The desk clerk said soon the restaurant would be opening.
As for the rest of the day, I ended up buying lunch for a beautiful woman, of Greek and Irish ancestry, who'd left her credit card at home. She'd been at the meditation, too, and thought that a group of people were to meet afterward to have lunch nearby. She was a health and diet life coach, and a former restaurant owner, mother of two grown kids, and divorced. I could tell she liked giving advice, and she knew a lot about dietary things. I didn't say much about my kids and my divorce. Mainly, I just listened. We had shrimp salads in the shade, drank ice water. Nice restaurant. Doing well, I hope. Delicious food cooked and served by a French family. Florida is odd. Old hippies and tight asses, side by side. Here, European chefs, tired of the cold, can make a good living in a tropical climate. Florida is a place where health coaches and meditation teachers can eke out a modest living, I think. I make barely more, or less, what do I know, as an elementary school teacher.
But, on that day, I did get to see that tree with its monkey family, and that was worth an extra lunch and some discomfort. Reminiscing is what I do most since I've been here, I'm living alone for the first time in my life. I loved being reminded of my grandpa, his dry sense of humor, those postcards, and remembering the days when I was still a kid at home with my family. I planned to send the photo to my brother.
I love and hate Florida. Why am I even here in Florida? I came to help my mom, who was sick and got a teaching job in a small public school in a migrant area. Mom died four months after I got here, though. None of us could believe it. And I'd never trade that time. The decision to stay, even though I am constitutionally miserable in hot, humid weather, is complicated. I always teased her that I'd never come live in Florida, why did she retire there, she would have to move back to Ohio if she ever needed me long term. But in the end, she got me down here. Really down here... at the bottom of the world. It's the bottom of the world if you are an equal opportunity polist. I mean the equator IS the bottom if you measure from both poles as the tip, right? It's been a surreal, strange and melancholic year. I left a house I'd lived in for 25 years, left the midwest and all my other relationships. To come to weird old Florida. Not used to it, either. To quote the Tom Waits song, I'm lost at the bottom of the world. -Oldgirl
Well, it was a mediocre experience, the guided meditation. My mat was thin on the hard floor. This relaxing exercise was not restful at all. I could hardly wait until it was over. Nothing new under the sun was said. Nothing inspirational, even. I did resolve to never pay for this kind of experience again, so, a small win, I guess. Afterward, though, I strolled the grounds in the heat and found two huge beautiful trees. Trees with... monkeys. Smiling wide, I tried to figure out if they told a story, like, monkey see, monkey do, but nothing stood out, that I knew of. Well, this was a definite improvement. Someone had placed money statues all around the lower limbs of the tree. I am charmed. Monkeys and me, we go back. Back to the postcards, my grandfather wrote after my mom took us grandkids to St. Louis from South Carolina in 1967.
Each told a one-paragraph story portraying my brother as a monkey in a zoo: getting sick on bananas, tormenting the ladies from my grandmother's bridge club, getting jealous of the lions. Later after my son was born, he became a monkey companion to my brother. I cherished these, and still have a batch of them, yellowing in an old tin box. The monkey tree made up for an hour of hard floored misery. I ignored the heat and continued to explore the premises. The air smelled a little bad, like a gas stove when the pilot's gone out, but not exactly. A groundskeeper told me it was magnesium I was smelling. I should have asked if it is possible to still bathe in the spring. I went into the empty hotel gift shop and got a tour of the one renovated room. Gorgeous. I bet this place was stunning in 1935. The desk clerk said soon the restaurant would be opening.
As for the rest of the day, I ended up buying lunch for a beautiful woman, of Greek and Irish ancestry, who'd left her credit card at home. She'd been at the meditation, too, and thought that a group of people were to meet afterward to have lunch nearby. She was a health and diet life coach, and a former restaurant owner, mother of two grown kids, and divorced. I could tell she liked giving advice, and she knew a lot about dietary things. I didn't say much about my kids and my divorce. Mainly, I just listened. We had shrimp salads in the shade, drank ice water. Nice restaurant. Doing well, I hope. Delicious food cooked and served by a French family. Florida is odd. Old hippies and tight asses, side by side. Here, European chefs, tired of the cold, can make a good living in a tropical climate. Florida is a place where health coaches and meditation teachers can eke out a modest living, I think. I make barely more, or less, what do I know, as an elementary school teacher.
But, on that day, I did get to see that tree with its monkey family, and that was worth an extra lunch and some discomfort. Reminiscing is what I do most since I've been here, I'm living alone for the first time in my life. I loved being reminded of my grandpa, his dry sense of humor, those postcards, and remembering the days when I was still a kid at home with my family. I planned to send the photo to my brother.
I love and hate Florida. Why am I even here in Florida? I came to help my mom, who was sick and got a teaching job in a small public school in a migrant area. Mom died four months after I got here, though. None of us could believe it. And I'd never trade that time. The decision to stay, even though I am constitutionally miserable in hot, humid weather, is complicated. I always teased her that I'd never come live in Florida, why did she retire there, she would have to move back to Ohio if she ever needed me long term. But in the end, she got me down here. Really down here... at the bottom of the world. It's the bottom of the world if you are an equal opportunity polist. I mean the equator IS the bottom if you measure from both poles as the tip, right? It's been a surreal, strange and melancholic year. I left a house I'd lived in for 25 years, left the midwest and all my other relationships. To come to weird old Florida. Not used to it, either. To quote the Tom Waits song, I'm lost at the bottom of the world. -Oldgirl
I find an answer in your story, but I doubt it's a very good answer. Still it's an answer. We do the trip, the visit, the journey, until, hopefully, we see the magic tree. the monkeys. The things that connect us to ourselves, our families, our memories. No guarantees that'll happen, of course. I wish you the best. Thanks for this adventure.
ReplyDeleteRefugio, thank you. I always try keeping an eye out for monkeys!
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