If you give a girl a trip to Florida

A child's tale adapted for adult times

If you give a girl a trip to Florida while the reactionaries are running amok, she’s going to hope for a great diversion.

She’ll be uncommonly tempted to shop at a strip mall for something shorter than the sleeves and pants she’s brought from a place where balmy was hard to imagine.

Then she’ll remember that she doesn’t have a car. So, she’ll say she’s delighted to tag along for the driving tour of the nearby city known for its high-priced homes.

After pretending to admire the four-hundredth dwelling with impeccable landscaping and precise pretension, she’ll decide she’s earned the midday cocktail she would never drink if things were normal.

While she’s sipping her beverage, someone will compare the gutting of government to coming down with Norovirus on a cruise to Mexico. They’ll go on and on, never noticing that the girl has slipped away for a walk on the beach.

On the beach, she’ll meet a seagull who will ask politely for food, and she’ll enjoy the conversation until she remembers all the bird-lives wrecked by high-carb human diets and abject consumption. She’ll leave without a proper goodbye and dash back to the condo among condos, where the others will be watching daytime television.

She’ll ignore the shows, but the commercials will ask pointed questions: “Do you suffer from chronic pain?” “Do you find it difficult to breathe?” She’ll stuff down the last of the Rolo Creamy Caramels and look lustfully at the Tootsie Pop display across the room.

This will not end well for the fit of her swimsuit nor the architecture of her attitude, but she’ll decide she is in good company on a beach walled by high rises and spattered with pay-per-use umbrellas. She is one among the gathered masses, a third presumably content, a third disengaged from the source of her preoccupation.

“What is this thing called source?” she’ll wonder, feet dimpling sand born in the mountains of Appalachia. Making her way to the peacock hued water, brisk and alive, her toes will embrace gifts she cannot see. Scooping them to the surface in giant, frog-like motions, she’ll think of sand-filled seams and shell-struck days when the sea still held all the secrets of the world.

And secrets will sound like whispers, and whispers will sound like peace, and recognizing peace, no matter how elusive, will divert her from the discord long enough to find hope one more time.

~Elizabeth

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Written in the style of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, this piece is my way of putting one foot in front of the other. I’d love to know how you’re getting along these days. What are you discovering? What’s whispering in your ear?

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