In two weeks I am returning to central Florida for the memorial of a long time family friend. Like my mother, she lived well into her 90s. Her late husband and my father were best friends, like brothers. When he suddenly dropped dead (on the golf course one Wednesday afternoon), we all took it hard. My father lost a brother, his widow a loving husband, his children a smart and generous father. It was just awful. So my brother and I are returning to Dade City Florida to pay our last respects to her, and visit with her daughters who we grew up with. In the last ten years, they lost their brother, who like his dad, inherited a weak heart.
It has been a "dying season" this past year. In one month, three friends all lost people close to them. Friends on Facebook "back home" are sending me information about classmates from high school who have been dropping like flies. At 63, I contemplate death more than occasionally. I have more yesterdays than tomorrows.
While there, I am sure my brother and I will drive on U.S. 301 between Tampa and Dade City. It is a stretch of road we know well because it was the shortest way between Dade City and Tampa until well after we both had moved away. It was opened in the 1930s, A Works Progress Administration project built when Franklin Delano Roosevelt (F.D.R.) was president. The road has been widened, and as water tables have lowered, some of the land has homes on it now, but for decades, the highway was a long ribbon of elevated pavement through the swamp. These roads are more like open topped tunnels than the highways people think of elsewhere. They are absolutely flat, and have few curves. One only encounters them in swamps, big long swamps. They are sort of a fixture of my youth. If we traveled anywhere, we went on one of these roads for at least 20 miles. Most places in Florida years ago had large un-populated swamps in between.
U.S. 301 between Tampa & Zephyrhills Florida
Upon this road, I was brought home from the hospital, upon this road, we went to visit friends, bury loved ones, share festive celebrations or go shopping in Tampa, carry back fertilizer for the orange groves in the station wagon. It is as familiar to me as Santa Monica Boulevard, I could probably drive it in my sleep, we are old friends.
About seven years ago,I had dinner with another long time part of this landscape. We also grew up together, went to the same church, were in the same school classes together. Decades ago, we were separated by a chasm of class, family establishments and other forces. In 1992 we saw each other at my father's funeral. It had been 25 years since I'd seen her. We both had learned a lot about life in the interim and we discovered that we liked each other. She said to me over dinner, "They're aren't many old timers left here".
We had a delightful and good dinner conversation, discussing everything from family histories, issues for children in early childhood, the growth in eastern Pasco county, and the conflicts associated with development.
Her family has been in the region for generations. Her grandfather was one of those men that people crossed the street to keep from having to encounter. Tough, stern, financially successful, he cast a long shadow in this part of the country. Not unlike growing up under the shadow of celebrity or other forms of fame, his was a hard legacy to follow.
Nonetheless, his daughter, my friend's mother, became the first woman appointed to the Florida Citrus Commission. The family prospered in the citrus business, planted orange groves, built a juice concentrate factory, went to New York to shop, lived and died on this patch of earth. My friend had four daughters and taught kindergarten for 30 years. Freezes came and killed the orange trees, fortunes were lost, the juice business went under, the factory was demolished years ago when the land was sold, an empire came and went, here in the hills above the swamps.
My friend described herself as a "Steel Magnolia". Underneath the charm and the drawl, not to mention a very good education, she can handle anything. I suspect she learned to drive on a tractor or a farm truck. She took great pride in telling me that all four of her daughters got manual transmission cars for their first cars in high school. "I'm not raising any helpless girls who can't drive as well as a man" she told me with great pride. It's that "Cracker Tough" that pre-air conditioning Florida demanded. Like any other group with initiation rights, ours was "get tough or die", and only southerners seem to understand this. It is one of those vestiges of the Civil War, weakness in the face of tribulation is just not allowed.
We both decried the loss of the native culture to the influx of massive amounts of 'Yankees". It's a southern thing.
In that world that we grew up in four decades ago, she was popular, a cheerleader, sought out, had clout, and friends. I was the social pariah, the too smart kid that no one took seriously, fat, glasses, socially inept. My parents, lost in their own world of pain and insecurity, had no idea how to deal with this kid who was too intense, and impossible to stop. My father's only way to deal with me was to explode every three days and find some reason to beat me. It was the same sado-maschocistic ritual his mother had perpetrated on him, the same one the nuns in the eastern European orphanages had perpetrated on her. "This kid is too full of life, let's beat some of it out of her/him." This pattern was replicated by some of my teachers and many of my peers. I, desperate for love and acceptance, kept coming back for more, filled with hope and optimism.
Dade City was my personal "Lord of the Flies". I was "Piggy" and they were going to kill me.
Me in the 7th grade
They almost did one night, right out there, on that long dark stretch of road between Zephyrhills and Tampa. After years of abuse, I could take no more. I was 20, had just been told to move out of the house. I had nowhere to go, and only five dollars and my 61 Rambler American to take me into whatever future was before me.
That night, on the way to the future that has become today, I had to drive this long, dark, lonely stretch of road, I came very close to ending my life, or seriously ruining my future.
I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had spent my life begging against being abused physically and emotionally. In my anguished sobs, I told God I was tired of it, tired of life, tired of fighting, and ready to check out of this very cruel world that had become my personal hell on earth.
I took my seat belt off, floored the accelerator and got my Rambler American up to 110 MPH. The bridges on this road stuck out abruptly from the edge and were massive poured concrete. Running into one would make a fine mess, my final "F you world" as I exited in seeming triumph.
Little did I know that my early anguish was part of preparation for a much bigger life. In that time, I could not perceive of any other world. All I could feel was overwhelming pain.
I wanted simple pain relief, at any price, even my life, which felt quite worthless at the time.
I felt the warm presence of someone, or something in the car. An invisible force on the seat next to me, but as real as a close friend. I knew in that moment that if I decided to check out, it would be okay, but if I did, I would miss many wonderful things waiting for me on that lonely, long highway that is life.
Call it God, Jesus, guardian angels, deceased ancestors, or a hallucination, it was real enough for me. In that moment, I knew that the worst of my life was over, and I had survived and kept my soul intact.
I also thought, "what if I don't die, but end up with a broken back and in a wheelchair for the rest of my life?"
My foot came off the accelerator, my seat belt went back on, and I knew the long dark night of my personal hell was over.
Things would get better from that moment on. And they did.
But I need to remember that moment, and make peace with all that brought me to it. It's why I have dinner with people from my past who weren't close then, but by way of their own ups and downs have found themselves on a road similar to mine.
I need to drive down this stretch of 301 to reflect upon the importance of saying "yes" to love and hope, and think about all that I and others would have missed if I'd surrendered to my fears that lonely night out there with the alligators, snakes, raccoons and possums.
What is life but a long and sometimes dark lonely road? Do any of us really know where it is going, or how we will get there? Is the safest and smoothest way really the best way? Is there a "best" way?
A priest friend once said, "We think we are human beings on a spiritual journey, but we are really spiritual beings on a human journey."
If that is true, then the road, the vehicle, and even the occupants belong to the universe, not to us. We can steer a little, that's about it.
We have an expression in Florida, "Once you get the sand in your shoes, you always come back." For all of us who grew up here this is true. I come back, to remember the dark mysteries that are the source of my life, including the long tunnel like highways that take us from one place to the next while passing through an even greater mystery, life.
We Episcopalians also have an expression, "life is a mystery to be celebrated, not a problem to be solved."
Edward G. Garren, LMFT 3/22/2013
