Subtropical Dispatch

I spent some time deep behind enemy lines in Florida, where the heat is like a precognition of the shape of things to come and the variegated foliage is manicured to satisfy the landscaping preferences of the transplanted Long Island and New Jersey homeowners. Even so, the neighborhood is not as tame as it seems at first glance. I’m told that residents don’t walk their dogs after dark because panthers prowl the golf courses and what passes for streets. There’s a pond behind the house we were visiting that’s said to be an alligator habitat. If a reptile grows to more than ten feet in length, you have to call an extreme exterminator, the grand pooh bah of pest control they call The Alligator Man. Nature gears up to overwhelm the subdivision. There is a sense of menace lurking behind the gates of the gated communities—Coconut Grove, Pelican Preserve, Blue Lagoon. Swampy, pina colada-drenched acreage. Floridians may believe they can exclude human undesirables in these steamy enclaves of villas with Spanish tile roofs, but animals are savvy and will in due course reclaim their territory. The real wilderness, the real threat, comes from the state offices in Tallahassee, a cultural wasteland where literacy and critical thinking are endangered species. My brother-in-law, a very decent guy, bemoans DeSantis’s decision to run for president because he thinks Ron is such a nifty governor.

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

One afternoon, temperature 90, heat index 105, we went to the pool across the street where we paddled around in water maintained at 88 degrees. Then we lay on chaise lounges under a canopy watching the hot breeze blow in the queen palms. There is a deep unreality to this place, like something out of Fantasyland which is ironic since Governor Ron regards Disney as public enemy number one. There are, apparently, a range of different realities and unrealities. Minimally, you have your evangelical Pat Robertson version and your racier Silvio Berlusconi version, to name two senior citizens now ordering the early bird special in the afterlife.

Against this fun house backdrop, our family is muddling through a great many challenges, much like other families in this time of the great unravelling. My brother-in-law and his wife are contemporaries of mine. Their calendar is a three-ring circus of doctor’s appointments organized around managing a dizzying array of diagnoses, hospitalizations, and prescriptions meds, each with its own designated side effect. At the same time, in southwest Florida they are surrounded by almost all of their children and grandchildren who dote on them. A favorite theme is how the kids do too much, a complaint made up of equal parts pride and dismay. They watch golf on four large screen TVs now that they no longer play and sprinkle their conversation with with references to the lingering devastation of Hurricane Ian. Trees are still down. Businesses died and never came back.

It is understood that our trip to see them is important, like a summit, a downmarket Davos, or maybe a trade show in the nostalgia industry. The old neighborhood, the schoolyard, mama before she got sick. We endured airports, humidity, and bad restaurants and they in turn put us up for four days and waited on us hand and foot, “you want something to drink, wine, soda, you wanna piece of cake?” We took care of each other. We were good to each other. I was amazed by how easy it was.

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It dawned on me that I had never spent so much time with them. Age is a great equalizer. All the ways we’re different no longer seemed to matter that much. Who cares if Frank was at Woodstock while Joe was writing mortgages at Chase? Who cares if we meditate and they go to mass? It makes them feel better, they say. It makes them feel more comfortable with their failing bodies and limited capacities, I imagine. All four of us are devotees of self-care, aficionados of family life. We see our days primarily in the rear view mirror. It is poignant to leave Joe in the parking lot at the airport at 5:30 am and wonder about seeing him again, listening to his signature nasal intonation and gossipy storytelling style. It has the bittersweet flavor of life itself, precious and fleeting.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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