a florida education.

- Published in Saw Palm: Florida Literature & Art, Issue #7 -

A Florida Education

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”
-Isak Dinesen

The first two things I ever learned were how to swim and how to run away from an alligator. I haven't yet had to run away from an alligator, but I know to run in a zig-zag pattern, since alligators' tails are disproportionately heavy compared with their torsos. They are fast, but it slows them down to change directions and swing that massive tail around. Never, never run in a straight line.

Learning to swim as a very young child was useful. Before fighting an undertow current in the Atlantic Ocean and swimming out of a white water river in North Carolina, I fished my little sister out of the pool when I was 4 and she was 3. She had been floating on the water, and then began to sink. I thought she was sleeping, and figured she'd be more comfortable on the top step of the pool, so I dove down to the bottom, dragged her up by her arms, and floated her over to the step. I went inside to tell my mother, who was folding laundry near the sliding glass doors, that Julie was sleeping on the water. As it turned out, she was drowning. My panicked mother called 411, then 911, and when the medics showed up she screamed and cried while they pumped on my sister's chest and tried to get her to breathe. Eventually her blue face spit up water. She survived, and I was a hero, though I didn't know it for many years. I really just wanted to make her more comfortable.

Sometime later I learned that the giant grouper fish is hermaphroditic, and that you have to wear jeans in the Everglades because the sawgrass will cut your legs, and also that you should not, under any circumstances, step on a jellyfish. I grew up thinking everyone had learned these things as a kid, and was shocked to find out that there were adults who couldn’t swim, and tourists who thought the Everglades were some sort of tropical paradise.

*

I learned that when you are very young and still take baths with your sister to wash the sand out of your hair and the smell of chlorine off your skin, there is a right way and a wrong way to take a bath. The right way is to sit calmly in the water and clean your arms and legs while you wait for your mother to return to wash your hair. The wrong way is to turn the water back on and let it run while you splash each other and slap the water with your hands in a game called “ocean.” The water will spill out all over the floor and your mother will come in and yell very loudly because the bathroom is a mess and you haven’t even cleaned your arms and legs yet.

*

In first grade I learned about the difference between cold and really cold. My school uniform was a green polyester jumper with a white button-up shirt underneath, penny loafers or saddle shoes, and a white polyester blazer to wear over my jumper every Wednesday, which was “Dress Day.” The blazer was intended to make our tiny selves look sharp, but it was really insulation, trapping the Florida heat and humidity under all that polyester. We also had special sweatshirts with our school logo to wear anytime it got cold, which by our standards was anything under 70 degrees. However, if it got really cold - 50 degrees or lower - we could wear our own sweatshirts and jackets to school, as if the children of south Florida even owned heavy winter coats and jackets. I don’t remember wearing anything warmer than the school-issued sweatshirt, but even if I had, I’m sure by the middle of the day I would have taken it off, my body already too warm under the heavy cotton and fleece.

*

In fourth grade I learned to wear deodorant, but I didn't think I was allowed to so I snuck it in my backpack and put it on at school. I didn't know anything about puberty and why hormones suddenly make kids smell like a filthy locker room. I just knew that I lived in Florida and I was always sweating. The deodorant was a solid white stick, a travel size that I must have stolen from my mother’s bathroom. Even though I applied it in the morning, I was sweaty. I'd reapply at lunch, sneaking into a bathroom to roll fresh deodorant over the dried crumbs of the morning's application. Then I'd sweat through the rest of the day.

*

After Hurricane Andrew blew away the big architectural screen enclosing our patio, I learned about pool safety and weather. It's ok, even delightful, to swim in the rain. The cold rain shocks your skin when you've been in warm water under a warm sun, and you shriek with the chill and the freedom of getting caught in the rain when you're already soaking wet. Nobody makes a fuss, griping about the umbrella at home, crouching helplessly under a newspaper or plastic bag. A few minutes later, the rain will probably stop and the sun will come back out to blaze at 90+ degrees. You hold your breath and squint your eyes and stay underwater for as long as you can while the sun flickers over you.

*

I learned to water ski at the lake house, with a pair of Snoopy water skis that were tied together at the nose to make sure I learned to keep the skis straight. The first few times I tried, I fell forward, water rushing up to burn my nose and sting my eyes. I learned to use my arms to guide my body back into position, keeping the skis in front of me and my legs crouched as I held on to the rope behind the boat. Finally I learned to press the skis forward, trampling the water underneath, sliding in and out of the wake as I skimmed the water side to side. I learned to hold on with one hand so I could wave to my dad as he drove the boat, and I learned how to let go as the boat slowed down so I could bend my knees and sink back into the lake.

My sister and I learned important hand signals for communicating with the driver of the boat when you are being pulled behind in a giant tube. We would lie side by side on our stomachs, holding on to the rope handles on either side. Once my dad started the boat, we were flying, the water spraying up into our faces as we laughed and screamed. To make the boat go faster, we would give my dad a thumbs up. To go slower, thumbs down. To stop the boat, a thumb across the neck. I learned to give this signal before it was too late, before we hit a patch of waves that sent us flying from the tube, cartwheeling in the air before smacking the water below. There would be a moment of panic, our bodies stinging from the shock, and then laughter as we swam back to the boat and climbed up the ladder, collapsing on the seats with a beach towel wrapped around our shoulders.

*

I learned that my cousins up North had never had a “hurricane day” off from school. They had snow days, which they usually had to make up in the summer, but they never stayed home on the day before a major hurricane hit, the sky a clear, cloudless blue and the air clean and quiet. Hurricane days were a mix of chaos and peace, the palm trees swaying gently in a soft, cool breeze while my parents loaded up the minivan with jugs of water, miniature cans of Sterno cooking fuel, and batteries for the flashlights. We’d fill up the bathtubs with water, just in case the bottled water ran out, and then we’d make giant X’s across all the windows with masking tape to keep the glass from shattering into the house. When the work was done, we could spend the day outside, playing by the pool or watching the neighbors secure their hurricane shutters, because everyone in Florida knows the day before the storm is the most beautiful, quiet, perfect day you’ll have all year.

The day after the storm, my dad would let me go with him on a drive through the neighborhood, going very slowly through the flooded streets, pointing out trees that had fallen onto soggy yards and branches that littered the roofs of houses and cars. It would be another quiet day, until everyone came out to clear away the mess, slogging through the puddles on the grass and encouraging each other that it could have been so much worse.

*

Our school was an "outdoor school," meaning we entered classrooms from the outside, instead of from inside one main building. This was common for schools in Florida, where it was temperate enough to do so, but the constant in and out left us sweaty, then chilled, then sticky, then frozen, then sweaty again. One day in high school my little sister sweat all the way through her purple button-down shirt, and I met her in the hallway outside the front office. She pursed her lips and blinked very fast but the tears came anyway. "It's ok," I told her. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about. You probably have a fever." "I'm so sweaty," she said. "Don't worry," I said. "Call Dad and see if he can pick you up." My father worked for himself in those days, so he left his office and picked her up. They went back to the house so she could take a shower and change her clothes, and then she came back because we had volleyball practice. Sometimes we got to practice in the big gym with air conditioning; sometimes we practiced in the small gym with a big fan blowing the hot air around while we wiped salty sweat out of our eyes and sopped up sweat from the floor with our kneepads. I drove us home with the air conditioning on, chilling us through our drenched t-shirts, and my sister was happy.

*

When I began working at summer day camp as a swim teacher, I learned it is not ok to swim if there is thunder or lightning. The part of me that calculated my hourly rate and hoped for tips from the parents knew that I should be disappointed when afternoon thunderstorms threatened the kids' swim time. But as a languid teenager just killing time until I could finish high school and get to college, I couldn't care less about making a little less money that week. I began getting dressed for work - swimsuit, shorts, tank top, flip-flops - while praying for rain. I’d walk outside, keys and lunch in hand, look up at the sky, and sulk to my car, straining my ears for the slightest boom. At work, while I helped the preschoolers float around the pool with their diapers bulging behind, I'd stare up at the sky, begging it to open up and send these kids inside so I could go home. If I got my wish, within 20 minutes I'd be at home on the couch, dozing to daytime TV while the rain splashed on the patio outside.

*

I came home for fall break, a confident college freshman with new jeans and much shorter hair. At lunch time I drove to my old high school and picked up my sister so we could walk on the cool, wet sand dividing the dry hot sand and the warm lapping waves. Our feet pressed into sand, leaving impressions that were quickly washed away by the water slowly climbing up the shore before slipping back to the ocean. We had brought along a disposable camera and took pictures of ourselves against the blue sky as we jumped in and out of the smallest waves. My sister had to get back to school for a math test that afternoon, and I knew my parents would kill me if she missed her test. But I had learned that everything you think is a huge deal in high school doesn’t really matter. So we threw our shoes and the camera onto the dry sand and ran, fast and yelling and waving our arms, straight into the water. We came up for air, rubbing the stinging salt out of our eyes and spitting it out of our mouths. The gentle waves carried us as we stretched out our arms and legs to float on the surface, and they pulled us along as we swam underwater, squinting our eyes tightly shut. Everything was warm, and free, and much later I would find the picture she had taken of me as I jumped in the air, looking back and laughing. When I drove her back to school, dripping wet with only 10 minutes before her test, she rushed to the bathroom to change into the spare clothes she had brought for volleyball practice. They wouldn't be in line with the dress code, but they would be dry.

*

I learned about outgrowing a place during the summers I was home from college. My sister and I would finish our work for the day, she as a sandwich maker at Subway and me as a summer school writing instructor, and go for long walks through the neighborhood to pass the rest of the day away. I learned that if you walk the same route enough times in one summer you will see baby ducklings grow into small ducks, and you will see the same kids playing basketball in the driveway, and you will sometimes be able to walk the entire way without noticing anything.

*

When I’d been gone for more than 10 years, my body acclimated to the snow and ice and wind of New England, I still couldn’t learn how to dress properly for the cold, my closet full of sun dresses and sleeveless shirts that I simply topped with a heavy coat instead of replacing with wool sweaters and thermal underwear. I learned that there are some things you simply can’t unlearn, and I learned to be thankful for that, in case I ever do need to run away from an alligator, and in case I have a daughter who wants nothing more than to float on her back in the waves of the ocean, learning that no place will ever feel as safe.