Florida, Oddly Enough - part two

California Dreamin' in Florida began last year about this time and hasn't stopped.  The Oak trees here know to shed their acorns and narrow leaves even though it's not discernably autumn; it's still hitting the mid-nineties at noon, and the leaves on the trees remain greenish. They brown once they fall. Nearby, papaya trees are also ready to drop their fruit. These oaks are hybrids, I’ve read, not true pin oaks, they’ve adapted to the sand and tropical temperatures. A year ago, I’d walk my dog through their crunch, enjoying the sound, oblivious to the knowledge that my mother had mere weeks to live.  What was on my mind? Shock, that apparently, I had moved to Florida. I was here. I had a job. No friends, yet, but busyness, deciphering the machinations of a foreign school district, trying to fit in, and a new way of thinking about my mother who was unable to walk more than a step or two, and whose mind was... more than a few steps away. And in the evening when I walked Sandy, I'd sometimes cry a little as I crushed the small brown oak leaves, so familiar and so out of place. I’m not a big crier, I’m pretty efficient with tears.

The coolness was so welcome, after July and August, that I naturally reminisced as I crunched along, lamenting the absence of the smell of autumn, damp wet earth...”all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.” This song, instrumental in my survival after the move, with my mom and sister, to St. Louis in 1967, now, sung in bits and pieces while I walked through dried brown pin oak leaves, is stitched in my memory like a calico patch. I drifted back to my third-grade year and my quasi-PTSD-ridden existence in that big old city – to me, dirty, after temperate, fragrant, Greenville, SC. I’d gotten Mamas and the Papas albums somehow, don't recall the details. We moved in November of 1967, staying with friends of my stepdad’s in their apartment on Swan and Taylor. But within a few weeks moved into our top floor flat on Itaska off Brannon. The only good thing I remember from those few weeks was Gooey Butter cake. Other than that, a strange environment, new school, strict teacher, and learning multiplication tables, which my stepdad tried to teach me. Shudder in sympathy, if you will.  It was pretty horrible.

What keeps a child sane? Stability.  For me, with a new, strict, germanic, stepfather I craved the comfort of television shows I'd shared with my grandparents and uncle in Greenville: Girl from Uncle, Green Acres, Get Smart, Family Affair, Saturday cartoons - bliss, the music I loved to hear pouring from my uncle's bedroom, my mother, my sister. My sister and I had been fairly free-range until her marriage to him. I craved anything familiar. My school was old and cold.  I felt sick confronted with my new life. Walking to school through city blocks, rather than along the creek and woods. So cold. Wearing scratchy wool. This city smells bad! It took me years to not be triggered by the smell of fresh paint, as my mom had painted our flat on Itaska right before we moved in. It was Fall in St. Louis and the leaves were crunchy underfoot, as I kicked Sweet Gum balls out of the way, praying I could somehow go back to live with my grandparents or be struck with amnesia so I could forget what had happened to me. But somehow the Mamas and the Papas came along and helped me through. Good timing. Their songs gave my poor little lost romantic soul a tiny anchor to hold onto in the desolation of the urban midwest. I could imagine my life in the future, even as I couldn't bear it in the present. And it made all the difference. Say what you will about John Phillips, he saved my life. 

Now, when I take Sandy for walks while visiting my stepdad, I hear that song, even when there are no fallen leaves. Forever now, the song will be Floridian and tied to last fall when for the second time I’d followed my mother somewhere I didn’t want to go. It's strange how things change, yet remain the same. Time will tell. 

                                         California Dreamin'

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