My stories are your stories

First leg of Road Trip

Dec 30,2023 – Jan 18, 2024

Post from Naples, Florida 

79 and overcast

One Human Family

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been traveling in my small camper to foreign lands (the Southern states) with stops in the hometowns of famous Southern writers, especially those authors whose writing focuses on the people and landscapes of their homes. Through the words of O’Connor, Welty and Faulkner we are transported back in time to Milledgeville, Jackson and Oxford. My pilgrimage, if you will, is an effort to understand how these and other authors use setting to enhance their stories, and how, at times, the setting becomes a character of its own.

Google maps, lets call her GM, is my traveling companion and guide. While trustworthy and mostly reassuring (better than some partners), GM keeps me on the right track with enough warning to change lanes or make a left turn. She is helpful when I make a mistake, but she can be uncompromising and, quite frankly, a nag, when I decide to follow a historical sign or make a detour toward the shoreline. Like a spouse who seeks peace by switching off their hearing aid, I have the option of hitting the mute button and I don’t have to feel guilty that I’ve hurt her feelings.  During the long blessed periods when she is quiet, I listen to books on Audible, trying to stay ahead of my literary destinations. 

I’ve tried to travel without an agenda day-to-day, sometimes driving two hours, sometimes six. I’ve slept in my van in friends or friends-of-friends driveways, been a guest in friends or friends-of-friends homes, camped in National or State or RV Parks or treated myself to the occasional hotel. My daughter Marion’s friend’s husband Josh, a rocket scientist in Cocoa Beach, provided a play-by-play description of what I was seeing, hearing, feeling, and smelling during a rocket launch that occurred within minutes of my arrival. Later that night, I was awakened by the blast of the 2:18 launch of a rocket that was to land on the moon. While I remember being ambivalent about space travel when my brothers were glued to our black and white TV in the 60s, I will never forget the awe in Walter Cronkite’s voice when man walked on the moon. 

It has been wonderful to see old friends along the way, to catch up, but sad to see an old friend struggling with cognitive impairment. At the same time, it was heartwarming to watch his wife’s commitment to him: in sickness and in health. If only we could all be so fortunate to have such a partner. A special thank you to friends-of-friends in Savannah for showing me around their city, hands down the prettiest thus far. Also remarkable, is their amazing collection of African and Haitian art. My granddaughters will approve my purchase of Haitian steel drum art with a Janus mermaid in the scene. To me, the mermaid represents two rare fetal anomalies: parapagus diprosopus and sirenomelia. In St. Augustine, I reconnected with a former Hopkins Maternal-Fetal Medicine fellow. In addition to providing dinner and lodging, she gave me a primer on MFM practice in the private sector or in other words we talked shop. Our academic group could and should consult successful mid-level private docs like her to learn efficiency and billing optimization. The first ten years of her career was spent in a hospital that had 18,000 deliveries a year.

Not sure what possessed me, but along the way, I started a count of Make America Great Again signs. And, to counter the feeling of rage that anything related toTrump instills in me, I chose to count herons as well: symbols of peace, calm, and balance. The Herons have become too numerous to record, which gives me hope for our planet and my psyche. In comparison, with the election officially underway with the recent Iowa caucuses (I won’t waste our time talking about those results), I’m happy to report that, thus far, I’ve only seen two MAGA signs and one billboard that read, Vote Republican. Save America with no mention of Trump. In Milledgeville, Georgia, I overheard a father and son (who had a voice like the actor Sam Elliott) talk about immigrants and the cost of food, while we all ate Thai food at a small restaurant with an open kitchen. There was no doubt who they supported and no doubt that the cook could hear them. When I reported my heron vs MAGA count to my son, he was quick to burst my bubble, telling me that despite traveling in the south, with the exception of my brief side-trip into rural Georgia, I’d not ventured into true Trump country. To quote him, “Excited you’ll get to see a new part of America haha.”

Until my arrival in the Florida Keys, my van was without cabin power. I’d tried on my way down, city by city, to get help but was told, over and over, “we can fit you in next week”. Of course, I wasn’t going to stop and wait, so I kept driving and like a cavewoman, when the sun went down, my day was done. By the time I discovered RVTAA (RV Technician Association of America), I was very well-rested. Jeff, of Chasing Sunsets, met me in the parking lot of a Winn-Dixie on Big Pine Key and after two hours and a trip across the street to NAPA auto parts Jeff had me on my way. Who knew that a lithium battery could go to sleep and needs more than a nudge to wake up. And who knew that I could wake up my cabin battery with my chassis battery with a set of standard jumper cables or that a small defective 2×2 part, literally a small black box, had prevented my chassis battery from recharging my cabin battery while driving. Who would even know where to find such a box?–Jeff knew! Now, I can have hot tea with milk, my elixir of life, as both my induction burner and my refrigerator have power and, perhaps more importantly, my day does not end when the sun dips below the horizon.

I made it to the southernmost point of the continental United States and immediately fell in love with this diverse, quirky town whose motto is One Human Family.  Judy Blume has been quoted as saying that living in Key West is like being back in childhood: “You ride your bike. You hang out with friends. You take a nap.” If I could afford it, and if global warming wasn’t real, and if hurricanes weren’t a constant threat, and, well, if Key West wasn’t in DeSantis’ Florida, I’d buy a small cottage and spend my winters there. 

I saw Judy at Books and Books, a non-profit independent bookstore that she runs with her husband. Not having grown up reading her books, I listened as others told Judy what she meant to them. With humility and grace, she seemed genuinely interested in their stories. While at Books and Books, I picked up Lee Smith’s latest novel Silver Alert which takes place in Key West and, as there were too many mosquitoes for a hike, I read it while camping in Everglades National Park. I would have enjoyed this book even if I’d never been to Key West, but my new-found familiarity with the town, its streets, restaurants and vegetation as well as its diverse population, gave me added pleasure, much like meeting an old friend on the street. At dinner, on my last night there, at a restaurant frequented by locals, I did what I always do. I made up a narrative about the older gentleman sitting next to me with his much younger wife. In my story, the wife eventually paid her dues for having married up to a much older man. But, Lee, a master of her craft, flipped the narrative; she did the unexpected. 

This journey into foreign lands, with time to read and think, reminds me of my MFA residencies at Bennington. Because the Key West Literary Seminar overlapped with my stay, I was also reminded of breakfasts at Bennington. I had the good fortune to share a table on two mornings with Melody and Barry, a retired couple, both writers, who were in town to attend the seminar and happened to be staying at the same hotel as me. Sharing meals with people who love to  read and write is perhaps an under-acknowledged benefit of a low residency program in a remote locale and reminds me of how fortunate I was to have attended Bennington before Covid.

Allan Gurganus, himself a famous Southern writer, gave our MFA commencement address. On this trip, his words keep flickering in my brain: reminding me that there are still a few hot coals in my stove. I hope, sometimes I pray, that when I retire this summer I’ll have years of “heat, light, and power” to continue to make sentences from the “tripartite–subject, object, verb.” I want to “remember everything [I was] ever ordered to forget ” while at the same time retain the ability to remember the last sentence that I wrote and the paragraph before that and the chapter before that. I so want to connect my sentences, those written and those yet to be created, into finished stories and novels. One of Allan’s wishes for us was “Let it be said, when you are dead, that you rewrote to be reread.” I’d settle just to complete the Bennington trifecta: Read. Write. Be Read. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” I want to “run the derby every damn day” for years to come. 

I was to meet friends in Naples today but after leaving the Everglades last weekend, my pre-booked boondocking site turned out to be a little sketchy, so I drove on, stopping at every campground between Homestead and Naples, only to find them all full.  I couldn’t understand my bad luck, until I realized that it was the long weekend. In desperation, I called my last resort–Walmart only to hear “No, ma’am. You can’t park overnight here.” Frustrated and about to get a hotel because the sun was setting (I have a strict rule of no driving after sunset), I called my good friend in Canada who called her sister-in-law Jane, also in Canada. Jane and her husband, Bill, unable to use their winter home this month as he is recovering from surgery, quickly responded with an address and the message, “Absolutely, go to the house, make yourself comfy and safe.” She even had her cousin’s husband come over to show me all I needed to know. If only everyone functioned in this way, as One Human Family, it would be a wonderful world indeed.

P.S. Over the last four days, I’ve come to the conclusion that every house should have a lanai room overlooking a pond. While reading and writing, I’ve watched  a colony of egrets feeding on the shore, several pairs of unusual ducks seemingly unable to decide if they want to be in the water or out, the occasional pelican crashing into the water for a fish and a solitary osprey who, nine times out ten, when I look up, is sitting on the same bare pine branch overlooking the pond. I’m convinced that his high-pitched whistle is a warning to the other waterfowl that the alligator is on the move. Friends looking after friends. One bird family.