Key West Rhapsody

Key West Rhapsody

Yes, I stood in the ocean and wept with joy.
I floated in the gulf and brushed seaweed from my hair.
Hearing a waterfall under water sounds like thunder.
I miss roosters crowing in the morning…and all day.
She decided to start living the life she imagined.
Closer to Cuba than the nearest Walmart, I found Sun Drop at $1.79 a bottle at Fausto’s Food Palace, cheaper here than it is where it’s made, Shawano WI.
I caught my own Mahi Mahi and ate it seared with olive oil and Key limes.
I never imagined there were so many shades of blue.
Just before the rain poured, I picked up 4 college kids from Pensacola in my 4-seat golf cart and drove us to Mallory Square.
The humidity is high and stagnant.
The air smells of orchids and cigars, is subtly spicey and subtly sweet.
The water feels thin and light.
There are two places where my soul feels at home; one is Manhattan, the other is Key West.
There will be a time when I go there, to Paradise, and I won’t come back. 

Those are some of the major “be mindful in this moment” memories from our trip to Key West. Before Mark and I spent eight days there in late May/early June, I had spent a total of roughly eight hours there twenty-nine years ago. But I knew then, “even if I have to live in a box on the beach”, I knew this is where I’d retire. Considering my ability to work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. in my current job, and, having lived in the equivalent of a tiny home while we were there, the possibility of moving there sooner than retirement is a high possibility.

It was very freeing to have a small footprint of space available to live in. Anyone who has ever helped me move or has been to any of the places I’ve lived in since I lived in Boston as an undergrad, may find this shocking. I have a ton of shit. I have been hauling books I read in high school (and never re-read), yearbooks from junior high, photos of my parents in my childhood and “junior cookbooks” with me since the day I moved into my first off-campus apartment in Boston. I still have a bookcase that was in the bedroom I shared with my sister in 1984.

I’ve been reading about people my age and younger living in Key West for roughly six months each year, depending on the climate they are coming from, and living the other part of the year where it’s likely much farther north, but they also call “home.” Apparently, there are boarding houses in Key West that offer this option. I haven’t looked for something comparable in Wisconsin yet, but I’m not hopeful.

Just by looking at photos of me from Key West is proof enough for me that this is a place where I belong. Not because of the touristy stuff we did, like deep sea fishing and then having the fish made to order at a harbor restaurant. I belong here because my soul feels full. I look forward to each day here. All I need is a small golf cart to run errands and for grocery shopping. I need to spend every day in water, a pool, a gulf, an ocean.

                                  

                                                          This is where my soul feels at home.            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                    

                                                                                   

 

 

                                                                                            

                                                                                                                

Gravehopping and Finding My Way Home

My favorite song about home is “Can’t Find My Way Home” by Blind Faith. The summer of 1989 my life-long group of high school friends and I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at Alpine Valley. 

We started the aimless trudge through the parking lot on the hunt for Eric’s Ford Escort, when Rolf called “Shotgun!” When we found the car, 45 minutes later, by parking lot etiquette, Rolf sat in the passenger seat and I sat in the back seat of what was really, quite a teeny, tiny little car. 

That Blind Faith song was on a “mix tape” stuck in Eric’s cassette player. I swear to god we heard that song two dozen times. I fell asleep at one point so that may be a low-ball estimate.

We were driving to Madison without a map, just some sketchy directions and a lot of pot. Did I mention we were all totally high the entire night? That probably explains why we shrieked like Howler Monkeys when we finally got to someone’s brother’s cousin’s house we’d been searching for in Madison.

“Home” has had multiple locations and connotations throughout my life. Geographically “home” has included Appleton, Boston, Neenah, Menasha, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oconomowoc, and Shawano. The consistent location of home has always been Shawano. My maternal grandparents spent their entire lives there, or within the “suburbs” of Wescott and Richmond. My grandma grew up on what was or would become the Menominee Rez. My parents met and married there. I was baptized three weeks after being born there because my father was shipping out to Basic Training before deploying to Vietnam. While he was in country my mother and I lived with her parents, my Grandpa and Grandma Krause. 

We moved to Appleton within weeks of my second birthday, but still, Shawano was Home. When we were leaving after a weekend there, Grandma would kiss us gently on both cheeks and say, “Now you come home again soon.” Her cheeks were soft like powered pillows. I cannot remember a single time when leaving that house without hearing her speak those words.

Sometime in early 2003 my sister and I discovered that on Saturdays of Memorial Day Weekends, our grandparents and our grandma’s two sisters and their husbands, our great-aunts and great-uncles, spent the day driving to the graves of our ancestors. They cleaned off the headstones, pulled out the fake, faded flowers from last Memorial Day Weekend and stuck in a bouquet of new, brighter fake flowers, and shared stories on the drive to the three cemeteries they visited. With their tasks complete, they stopped at a tavern in Red River, another Shawano suburb. In this part of Wisconsin there are no “bars” – far too “big city.” These were taverns. They had supper at one of dozens of supper clubs they could choose from. Places we went to when I was kid and thought eating frog legs made me “exotic” and “sophisticated.” I was eight years old.

Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend 2003 my sister and I tailed along with our grandparents, great-aunt Margaret and great-uncle Dave, great-aunt Shirley and great-Uncle Butch. Butch and Shirley had an enormous Suburban with a back row tiny enough to rival the back seat of my friend Eric’s Ford Escort, which is where my sister and I sat. I swear to god every time we stopped at a cemetery, tavern or the supper club, Margaret would forget my sister and I in that cocoon and shut the door without letting us out of the car. That was the only way we could get out and every stinkin’ time she forgot, we knocked on the window looking forlorn and pissed off at the same time.

Every year at her grandmother’s grave, a woman I never met yet lives inside of me, my grandma said, “There was never a better grandma than her.” Every year I said, “She has a run for her money because you’re the best grandma there ever is.” She held me a little closer and said, “I can only hope so, Dolly.” She called all five of her granddaughters “Dolly”.

It didn’t take long before my maternal aunts and cousins filtered in to Gravehopping with us on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekends. The more we gained, the more we lost. We all lose those we love to the inevitable unknown of Death. It may come fast or slow, tragically or peacefully, but still, it comes. There can be no other way. Margaret was the first of “the Golden Girls”, as we referred to them, to pass in 2010. Then it was Grandma in 2016 and finally Shirley in 2018.

My husband and I moved to Green Bay in August 2019 for my new job. With the help of Siri, Irish accent version, I can now find more places than the casino, the airport and the stadium which was the extent of my geographical knowledge of this town until moving here.

As Memorial Day Weekend closed in around me this spring, plans for Gravehopping were made. As I was writing down ingredients for Cucumber Salad, my signature dish and meal contribution since Grandma died, I stood in my kitchen and suddenly dropped my pencil, my notepad, and I couldn’t shut the cupboard door because I was literally paralyzed. I didn’t blink, I don’t remember breathing although obviously I was, I stood there with one thought banging inside of my skull: From where I stood, I didn’t know how to find my way Home.

Shawano has been my true north since conception. Not knowing exactly how to get there is akin to fate shaking me like a snow globe only when I land, the earth is sand, the air is stiffening fog and I have no voice.

Just like so many decades before when trying to reach Madison without a map made driving monotonous and pointless, I felt that way about driving up to Shawano. For the first time in my life I couldn’t find my way Home. 

Of course, Irish Siri got me to my aunt’s house easily. Gravehopping was accomplished and is in the books for another year. However, if I had to get in my car right now and drive to Shawano, I couldn’t do it...without GPS. In the genuine sense of the lyric, “I can’t find my way home.”