Category: relationships

We have been once again rapidly zigzagging our beloved states of Florida and South Carolina. First stop…Barnacle Bills in St. Augustine, to meet-up with David and Rosie and Ben for fried shrimp. Hugs and kisses and “so glad to see you’s” all around.  Then back to business because Barnacle Bills is the Holy Place for shrimp at the end of their life.  They batter them with Datil Pepper and drop them in the fryer. When they reach a golden brown, the waiter brings them to our table along with coleslaw, hushpuppies, and a dish of collards.  Best of the South.  Barnacle Biil’s has been a mainstay for us since they opened, and the service and shrimp has always been the best on the Northeast Coast.

With tummies full of shrimp and hearts full of anticipation we made our way to Summer Haven and The Beach House. Of course we were bringing each other up to date on our lives and, like every family, catching a snag now and then as we drove the short distance.

The Beach House has been in Rosie’s family since it’s inception.  It’s set up on stilts, t on the North side of Gene Johnson Road and Old A1A. From the front side you see the wide veranda porch that wraps the North, East and West sides of the beloved house.  It sits on PVC pipes on concrete supports atop a large sand dune. My brother David says nobody knows why it doesn’t slip off the supports, but thinks it might be the shape of the roof.  When the wind hits the house it travels up the slope of the roof and is pushed down as the wind rushes back up to the sky. This wonderful place has survived a number of furious hurricanes over the years, but unlike mama’s beach house, it was built far enough back on the dunes to avoid the worst of the weather. About a half-acre of sand, palms, undergrowth and overgrowth do a decent job of protecting the house. And the bottom is open so any floods flow right through from the front to the back rarely destroying anything vital.

The original house square is believed to be over 100 years old.  Nana and Louie Phillips bought it with Uncle Albert and Bee Phillips. Eventually it was Bud and Phyllis Tilghman.  1964 was a bad hurricane…Donna.  There were various others but most didn’t really hurt the old beauty…. We had Matthew a couple of years ago with 3 or four less powerful ones … it was Matthew that wiped out the Summer Haven cove, but not The Beach House.

As children we used to absolutely loved hurricanes. We would leave school and head for the beach to watch up close the power of nature. The waves would be huge and would crash against the rocks the state of Florida would place to stop the ocean from crossing old A1A.  That’s why mama’s house didn’t make it, because it sat on pylons at the edge of the Matanzas Point and on the ocean side of A1A. The Beach House survived…. Oh my Gosh, though, the short time mama’s house was out over the ocean, we had an absolutely holy place at the beach. Nothing between the night sky and us. Nothing between the magnificent and powerful Atlantic Ocean and us. Alan Ewing once said they were not going to put anything in the house they couldn’t lose, because the hurricanes were absolutely going to take it one of these days. And he was right…but it was after Alan had died and mama moved what was left of the house to the other side of old A1A and sold it.  No magic left in it.

 

The Beach House survived them all however. Paw-Paw sat on that wrap-around porch, where you could always find a breeze, and smoked his cigars, saturated by his wonderful memories, till he died in his 90’s…  till he couldn’t climb over the rocks to get to his beloved beach to fish anymore.  Rosie showed me a picture of Pa Pa and Phyllis when they were about 24 or 25 years old and my God they were beautiful. Both of them looked sexy as hell and she looked like Rhonda Fleming and he resembled a handsomer Clark Gable with a big ole stogey sticking out the side of his lips. They both looked gorgeous and sexy. It’s interesting to see pictures of people you have known all your life when they were young (probably when you first knew them). I was startled to see the shining freshness of their faces and the anticipation in their eyes.  Made me wonder if I ever felt that kind of anticipation. I was afraid of my future and as a consequence made all sorts of crazy decisions. I don’t ever remember having the patience to allow a moment to develop into an hour, or an hour into a day. I had no idea who I was, or what I wanted to be.  I was in a rush to find someone to love me. It never occurred to me I could trust myself to create a good, solid future for me.  Oh no. I wanted out of my life and into someone else’s. I wonder: are there any young women who pause, take a deep breathe, and learn how to live alone before joining another “for as long as they both shall live”.   That’s another story for another day.

Today Rosie and Ben manage the house and it’s upkeep.  I am so lucky because my sister Rosie loves me enough to share. The water tower sat out back, nestled in the Florida scrub made up of palmetto, palm and underbrush, The daily rains would fill the tower and a shower was constructed on the side so we could wash our hair and bodies in rainwater. It was magical and wonderful and we were very lucky children.

The old tower came down sometime in the 70’s or 80’s. I think. (I’ll check with my source and get back to you.).  We should have had a ritual or ceremony of some sort to show our gratitude for the years of fabulous, rainwater showers.

I wonder if we could replicate that water tower today…build it out of stronger stuff? Surely it wouldn’t be that difficult… right?  But then again, what kind of water would we collect. Today it is likely to be polluted- or at the least certainly less pure than the waters of our youth. I can’t help but believe so much of the pollution filling our oceans and streams is due to the lack of foresight as well as just plain old-fashioned greed.  Companies and corporations pouring their waste water into the oceans…and the ignorance of people who don’t even know enough to pick up their own trash (including cigarette butts!) when they leave after a day at the beach. Who are these people???
I remember when I was in Doctor’s Hospital in Manhattan giving birth to my son. I had a private room with a window looking out over the Hudson Bay. There was an odd looking boat on the river pulling a huge pile of what looked like garbage out to sea. I asked the nurse, “What is that” and she replied, “That’s a garbage scow going out to sea to dump NYC’s garbage I was horrified, when she said it, and I am horrified now. I am sure NYC does not still do that, but the fact that they, and likely we, ever did is unacceptable. Look to Sweden. Can we do what they do?

We pull in behind the house where the water tower used to be and open our car doors. The humidity is so thick we know a storm is coming. This time of the year afternoon thundershowers are de-rigor and the skies open up just as we grab a couple of suitcases and head up the stairs.  The great thing is we are going to be here just the five of us for four days.

To be continued,,,

 

Guest Blogger:  Stacie Cortney

As I sat in my back yard with my foot elevated to prevent it from swelling, I started thinking about reincarnation. I thought about my mom and began to compare her life to mine. She broke her foot when she was 50. She “rescued” her grandchild when she was 49. She quit drinking when she was about 52. She kept chasing her relationship with her daughter by incorporating her grandchild.

Then I thought, what if reincarnation happens before the first human dies…hence history repeats itself.

I am curious about this. I have always liked the idea of reincarnation.  I find myself contemplating  how I have been on the same path as my mom. I broke my foot at 50. I quit drinking around 52. I flew to New Mexico to “rescue” my grandchild at 49.  And I have been chasing a relationship with my son through my grandchild. I guess I need to look back to see what I am supposed to do…or maybe I’ll break the chain and do something different … maybe create a new path.

11-18-2017

THURGOOD MARSHALL

If you want to help change the awareness of the culture in this country, go to your nearest movie theatre immediately and buy a ticket to Marshall. Take your best ethnic friends with you and after you watch this movie go somewhere and have dinner and talk, serious dialogue, about this film. Don’t hold back. Say what you think!

Chadwick Boseman plays Marshall in this remarkable film set in 1941 before Marshall became famous for Brown v. Board of Education before he sat as Judge on the Supreme Court. After you have begun to chew on that, go and get tickets to Hamilton, the amazing play written and brilliantly played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, inspired by the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by historian Ron Chernow. These two remarkable works of art, unless your heart is made of stone, will change you. No matter what -you will be changed. We should show them to every family in America, no matter what their race or ethnicity or color. We must change the way we look at each other. What we see when we look at each other.

What have we been indoctrinated by our childhood context to believe? We must go back and read history for ourselves. Develop a lust for history! History is made up of stories of people like you and me who believed they could make a difference in the world. They were committed to doing what they could to change the wrongs in the world. They told it like it was! They didn’t let fear stop them from their commitment. Thurgood Marshall was a rabble-rouser. His passion made people uncomfortable with their complacency. He was out to get justice and he did it because he was passionately motivated to seek truth and justice. That is what is so remarkable about the film Marshall. It’s not truth prettied up in its Sunday best. It’s truth that’s dirty, torn and muddy …and at times brilliantly beautiful…and it is a truth that makes us question our complacency in the face of racism, sexism, political justification and our tacit approval of the evil we tolerate because of our fear and complacency.

We breathe in our beliefs like we breathe in oxygen from the context of our families where we are born. And we breathe in what our family believes until that truth is challenged and we have the possibility of learning something different. The context of our environment is what creates our lack of individuality as adults. If Dad is a bully and beats me every other night after he has fought with mom and had a few beers- chances are that because dad is my role model I may learn this is what men do as adults, and adopt some of those behaviors along with Dad’s beliefs. When I grow up I will justify them because that is what happened to me and it is what I know as truth. If I’m a girl, I may choose to marry someone who is just like Dad, because that is what is familiar to me. If my family is racist, sexist or doctrinaire Democrats or doctrinaire Republicans, I will likely adopt those beliefs as truth because that is where I learn to think, learn what is right or wrong, what is good or evil. If I never stop to consider who I want to be and begin to individuate, it is likely I will end up a statistic of some pretty crazy beliefs I never examined. Chances are in that family I am likely to have poor self-esteem or confidence. So, guess what? I compensate by becoming a blustery, blow-hard, bully to fit into my violent family.

Like it or not, we are a product of our times, our family, and our genetics. When we are born we need our family to accept and care for us. We are babies for goodness sake! You can’t feed yourself. You can’t do much of anything, so we need whoever is taking care of us to like us enough to take care of us. So we try to please them. We smile, coo and giggle (it’s all we’ve got at first!). Very early in our development, we start to mimic our parents. They teach us how to BE. We please them and they reward us. We displease them and they punish- and a frown from Dad or Mom is the punishment to a young toddler. We learn to make meaning out of our experience through their sometimes subtle and often blatant responses, and it continues until and unless we hit a brick wall that allows us to consider what/who we are separate from our parents!

Look, I personally believe very few parents want to hurt their children. Most want to do their best! But raising children is the most difficult job we will ever have. It is often exhausting, chaotic, stinky, infuriating, embarrassing, frustrating, etc. Most parents do the best they can, and often the best they can is not good enough. Remember they were parented by less than perfect parents in less than perfect times, and their parents were, and their parents were– back to the beginning of time. Remember they didn’t have the conveniences we had. My son showed me an App. that can show you the location of your children if they are carrying a cell phone. That would have been extremely helpful when he was a teenager! Wisdom isn’t accumulative, but knowledge is.

If we can stop long enough to develop empathy towards an entire race of people who were treated as if they were less than human in ways that are painful just to consider, what is wrong with that? Their generations all the way back were tortured, spat upon, beaten, raped, shamed, humiliated, in ways we can’t imagine. They are just people like we are. Some of us are kind, some are not. Some of us are awful, some are not. On and On and On and On. Just people, people! What’s it going to cost you to admit that? Frankly, I’m sick of identity politics! I can see I am a different color and other than that I can’t see a difference that allows me freedom and not you based on color! What kind of ignorant craziness is that?

The wisdom of films and plays like Marshall and Hamilton allow me hope.I was born in 1942 in a small town in the South. It was a year after the time frame for the film Marshall. So many opportunities for equality were squandered and ignored during my lifetime. The Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court 1954 decision declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. Integration of schools and public places begins. I went all the way from first grade to graduate from high school in segregated schools. I saw signs “White Only. Then “There is no separate but equal,“ said the Supreme Court. The sit-ins when I was in middle school. Going to St. Augustine to hear Martin Luther King speak when I was a senior. First Black students at the University of Georgia when I was a Junior. The riots of the 60’s– George Wallace and the dogs and the firehoses– John F. Kennedy elected as President of the United States in 1961- and hope flowed like water until he was assassinated on Nov. 1963. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968 and Robert Kennedy in June 1968. Lyndon Johnson, who was JFK’s Vice President enacted many of the measures Kennedy had been urging at the time of his death, including a new civil rights bill. Johnson’s agenda for Congress in January of 1965: aid to education, Medicare, anti-poverty bill and anti-discrimination bill, removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Viet Nam was raging and eventually, 1968 Johnson withdrew as a candidate for reelection. Thurgood Marshall was the first African American confirmed as a Supreme Court justice on August 30, 1967. I was 25 years old. By the time Richard Nixon became President the nation was divided. Faced with impeachment by 1974, Nixon announced his resignation and his Vice President, Gerald Ford, became President. Then Jimmy Carter 1977 to 1981 (I was living in Atlanta and Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia…a racist and an embarrassment). Learn what YOU believe, people. Figure out who you are when you are alone with yourself

My point is this: I am old and I am sick of racism! It makes no sense! Go see this movie. Go see this play. Discuss everything about both till you are exhausted and finally let go and allow everyone the right to do and be without you putting up barriers!

 

11-18-17

After a full working day I am really tired of making a grocery list, going to the store, getting a basket, walking through the store and finding the products on my  list, making sure the expiration dates are still good, filling my basket, searching for meringue powder and not finding it, comparing prices and freshness of produce, unloading the cart at the check-out counter, producing my store card for the discount, producing the coupons I have cut out of the newspaper or printed off the computer, remembering to take my plastic bags to replace the brown recyclable paper bags, packing them up as they are tallied on the cash register, hearing the final total, sticking my card in the slot and signing it (only to remember I needed a bag of ice), not finding a packer in my aisle because their is only one for ten aisles,  rolling the full cart out to my car, rolling it right back because I forgot my bag of ice I paid for, emptying the groceries into my car, feeling guilty about not putting the cart in the cart bin when it is empty and instead parking it caddywampus on the curb of the planter, driving home hoping I have enough gas not to have to stop and fill-up the tank until tomorrow, drive into my garage, get out of the car and go into the house hoping someone is home to empty my car but they are all strangely absent… so, I go out to the car and bring the bags of groceries into the house and place them on the counter, unpack and put them all away and, finally collapse exhausted into a nice soft chair and realize I left the ice on the bottom level of the grocery cart. All the people who were strangely not there when I arrived home suddenly arrive home asking, what’s for dinner!!! Why does this remind me of Sysiphus?