When I was in kindergarten and first grade, we lived in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Because I was so little, I have only fleeting images and brief moments of memories. Of course, there are many photographs from that time, too. Last weekend I traveled to Orlando for a chorus concert with Johnathan, my oldest. During the very long drive, we had lots of time to talk and I shared some of the memories I have from Florida.
Maybe because it’s my birthday or maybe because of mother/son time, I thought a lot of Mom. It’s hard for me to remember who she was back then. She was just Mom. I do remember that she sang in the choir at church and took me to school in the mornings. My siblings were still at home – back then our age differences were very prominent since they were in junior and senior high. We lived only a couple of blocks from the beach and they would take me there often. It was Mom who was my primary friend.
Knowing her the way I do now, I wonder how she adjusted to living at the beach. By this time, she’d moved so many times with her family because of Dad’s time in the Air Force, but the last home had been North Carolina near where she’d grown up. I wonder how hard it was for her to leave Cary, NC. It’s a long way from Fayetteville to Cocoa Beach.
In Florida, we had a white stucco house with a back patio. I remember rinsing off my feet outside before I was allowed to walk inside. The tile floor was always cool. There was a way to pass food through a kitchen window so we could picnic on the back patio to minimize the ins and outs. My brothers shared a room which must have been pretty tough on teenaged boys!
We lived in a cul-de-sac neighborhood and I had lots of friends who lived nearby so I could walk to their houses. I learned to ride a bike on the road near the canal behind our house. My school was only a block from the house and there were days I walked to school with a friend – just two primary school girls. Although Dad was in stationed at Pope Air Force base, we lived in town near Freedom Seven Elementary. The church was only a few blocks beyond that.
I remember Cocoa Beach in a very romantic idyllic way. I did have a few run-ins with sunburn and sand mites and the scratches from the Crown of Thorn plant and other cacti. There were also a couple of times I got into BIG trouble, but I mostly member a sense of community and friendship. I saw Dad as a movie star – this was during the time “I Dream of Jeannie” was being filmed there – and Mom as his glamorous wife.
Johnathan remembers Macon in much the same way. We moved to Clarkesville when he was five. He has memories that made that time idyllic for him. I wonder how many of my memories were embellished by my childhood mind.
There was the night in 1970 or 71 we went to see a rocket liftoff. I can still see it so clearly in my mind’s eye. It was so late when we got home. It was probably only midnight, but it felt like 2 or 3 o’clock. There was the overnight camping trip with Mrs. Gilbert, my kindergarten teacher. It was to an island across the canal from the school and she took us (maybe my whole class) on an overnight trip. Can you imagine that one? (She also had us do calisthenics each morning in the sunshine and read to us from the Bible and do 5th grade math.)
I see Mom’s big smile when she saw me the next morning. I was dirty and smelly, and she wrapped her beautiful arms around me and took me home. Mom has an excellent sense of smell and I bet she scrubbed me for a week!
In the pictures I see her big smile. She’s always had a beautiful smile. My memories of Florida are wonderful, idyllic even because of her. She gave us all a very happy childhood. I’m so blessed.
