TAKE YOUR CHOICE

An ungodly noise wakes me from a deep sleep. My sweet, loving dream evaporates in a second. I blink. The sun is barely up. The clock shows 6:30. Oh, that noise has to be Mrs. Harmon rolling her well-used black barbecue into the storage area next to the garage. Mr. Harmon will soon dis-assemble the picnic bench and table and stow that too. Another summer gone and the old lady got me again. Her back yard is almost ready for fall and the winter snows. I have yet to buy the yellow/orange tulip bulbs I have to bury around the mimosa tree. They will be the harbinger of spring. The garden shop opens at 8. Tomorrow I’ll get the bulbs or maybe- Wednesday.

The unborn dry tan/gray tulips have been on a kitchen chair for a week. Procrastination has always been my middle name. Today I will do the job. Garden gloves, kneepads, a small spade, and those babies will have a long nap.

It’s just about Florida time. Like the sparrows that fly back to Capistrano, we fly to Boynton Beach for the winter. Mixed feeling spread into the marrow of my bones. Falling gold and red leaves, branches overladen with ice and snow, logs sputtering in the fireplace have to go into hiding until we return.

Robert and I left our closets full the last time we headed north but we still pack a large suitcase with new items we got on end of season sales. We are ready. Tomorrow Chuck will put our golf bags and suitcase in our car, drive us to the airport, and proceed to drive our car all the way to Boynton Highlands. I laugh at that name. There are no highlands in Florida. This area is so level that a fire ant hill can be seen from across the street.

Why do I complain? This, according to Robert, is the best of two worlds. We have Northern and Southern friends, good weather, quiet and fun time. ‘Robert, I don’t like this nomad, gypsy life anymore. ‘Liz, let up already. Relax.’ I can’t. I go to sleep envisioning the tulips, the lilacs that are absent here and miss them. Up north, I think about the gorgeous colors of the hibiscus, the brilliant red bottle brush trees. I miss them. For ten years Robert and I have been living double lives and I am now ready to settle in one place. Which one should I push? The slightest mention of a change and we go at it, argue until we don’t talk for days.

I think I am going into a depression, one my husband will deny I am in. There has to be more than golf, luncheons, packing, unpacking. I watch the papers to do volunteer work and try a few that don’t fill the bill for me and then I spot an ad. Robert and I are having a light supper before Tues. Bridge night. ‘Look, Hon, look at this, a creative writing class starts Nov. 10. I think I would like to try it. What do you say?’ Carefully he thinks it over, shrugs, ‘Why not?’

And so I enroll and am intoxicated. My pen moves all the time except when I am emailing my stories to friends up north. Today I will be writing about the beauty of the yellow/orange tulips peeping thru the soil that we will enjoy seeing together in spring. I’ll surely also write about the long legged white egrets finding breakfast in the lake behind our apartment.

And most of all, I’ll tell them I am well, happy and can’t wait to be back up north.