What They Call Cold Feet

I can't stop this gnawing in my stomach. It set in the minute that we stepped back onto Atlanta soil last night--well, Lilburn is more or less Atlanta (representative anyway). Four and a half days at the beach has burned away all motivation for movement, especially the sudden and essential movement the next two weeks will require. Already I have slept away a good part of the morning, and I can't seem to start with the first thing on my list.

So I'll write about Florida.

It was a rich and lazying week. Beginning, for me, with the discovery that the Dukes' collie Bonnie's will only drink filtered water over the coastal sludge.

Then so many stars, you forget how many.

I tried my hand at fishing for the first time. The first time that counts--I threw a fly out once with my ex-step-grandparents, when I was thirteen and still technically a vegetarian, wincing at the worm squirming on its hook, utterly horrifyed by the growling a fish makes as it struggles in vain for air. Then in March or so I went fish-catching with Kris and John at Lullwater, to feed not our bellies or our egos but the burgeoning aquarium at Harwood. Lullwater versus Flagler Beach proves an unfair comparison.

We stood outside Ron's bait shop for hours, and somehow the name on my license still wound up reading "Victoria A. Hulk."

My hands smelled like raw shrimp, and in mixing with the heat caused my stomach to rise and fall like the mysterious, fish-withholding waves. John, his mom Ceci and I went to the pier after dinner one night, and were greeted by cockroaches, and a depressing cast-aside exterminated stingray under dim lamplight. And nothing on our lines but seaweed.

Tortoises figured prominently in the visit. They're everywhere and have personality in excess. The first we spied busily scarfing down grass in the park, ignorant of our presence as one who has learned to tolerate constant outside attention.

We biked fifteen miles down historic highway A1A, and came across a dying turtle on the highway, deserted in the middle of the road but clinging to life like every animal does when it's doomed. Its durable shell was no match for the unforgiving crunch of a truck's tires. You could see its spine rising and falling as it breathed. John ran desperately out to the creature's aid, lifted it up gently and sadly, as blood gently cascading through the cracks in its shell. We placed it out of sight on a bed of grass, horrified for several moments, as if we too had been rolled over by something heavy.

The shock and grief of the helpless turtle's death, so easily avoidable, stirred up other sadness that afternoon. Other senseless images of death came to mind. But following our own humanness, we quickly became emmersed in the other wonders the beach held for us. Surrounded by blue in the evening, ocean and sky seeming as one and no way to distinguish the shoreline.

A wild storm overtook us the last day, and I sat with my swimsuit still on, watching the silvery flash of water skim across rooftops like steam in a pan.

We stopped by Greenbough yesterday and I got to see Thomas's tree. A holly that in a gentle rain seemed to have tear-stained its silvery bark. As we walked through the nature preserve the other day, a hawk kept diving just in front of us, and Ceci said it was Thomas's way of letting us know he's here. It's a bad time of year for all that--his birthday in ten days.

But we're back now, and I must get to work. I miss the kids at the Autism Center and had plenty of time during our lengthy carride back to regret the fact that I won't see certain smiling faces. Let's see if I can muster the energy to leave this couch.

- Lex