Ode

I have started missing Florida more. I can think of it now without feeling smothered, remember all the things I loved about it before I moved there and in the first couple of years after I arrived. For some reason, memories of driving along certain parts of highways make me wistful, I guess because they took me to and from places and people I love still. And I just ate a Florida grapefruit, so how about that!

Yesterday what got me was thinking of all the places to go at any given moment. I always miss Disney World, but I suddenly and strongly missed being surrounded by the ocean on 3 sides. There is a part of me that is always aware of just how far I am from the ocean and other bodies of water. Years ago, I felt landlocked here in NY. I hope that doesn’t happen again, but I had a flickering taste of it yesterday.

And you do get used to that perpetual summer, even as you think you never will, feel your every part aching for the seasons that you grew up in. Because you lived away from seasons for 10 years, and now that you’re back, WOW do they zip right on by. Right now summer feels like forever ago. (Of course, we’re not having a normal winter, either, which throws everyone off a little, even those who sing The Praises of No Snow.)

Most of the time it’s Disney World, though, something people who didn’t go there as children might not get. Goofy as it will sound, and as much as most people won’t understand it, there is magic there, and for children like me, great promise.

I flash back to being in simple places like the open mezzanine in the Contemporary, and I can remember feeling the quiet buzz of magic and dreams and anticipation there. Just standing there, or moving from store to store, waiting for your mom as she finishes buying something. The fluctuating sounds of people around you, the warm night sky outside. Having just come from dinner, heading to the coolest game room on earth downstairs, and knowing you’ll be getting on the monorail soon to go back to your hotel room, worn out and suntanned and ready to sleep for another day of it all.

There is especially nothing like Disney World at night, from the lights of Main Street to the quiet contentment radiating from families who just had the best day of their lives. Children conked out on their parents' laps on the bus back to the hotel, autograph books and giant lollipops and spinning blinking Buzz Lightyear toys clenched tightly in their sticky hands, dreaming of magical meetings with princesses just a few hours before, so long-awaited and hoped-for. Parents talking like old friends with complete strangers who just had the very same day. For me, a lonely only child with a neverstopping imagination, Disney was a haven, the only place in the world outside my own house and backyard where I actually belonged. Peace. Escape. Hope. Dreams. Magic. That is my Disney.

I always figured I would meet my guy there, too, but oh well.

So for a while, not so long ago, Florida called to me; warmth, sunshine, constant green and blue and gold called to me. Specks of sun glistening on big, big water, all the way to Africa. The ocean I almost never visited while only 45 minutes away from it. Thanks, Florida, for the cushion, for the soft landing. Glad we’re back on good terms.



A brief list of things miss’d:
PR’s
Memories of India
Ichiban
Sand Lake south/west of I-4
Mall at Millenia [sic]
Supertarget
Movie theaters
RBMA!

The smell of the ocean, even in the middle of the state
The wind through the trees at night
Being out by the lagoon behind the Polynesian, waters lapping the shore, sounds of happy people in the distance

The ocean under a night’s sky

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