LJ Idol Season 10 - Week 11: Blue Hour
It was one of the dumber things I've done, I suppose. But also possibly one of the better. I'm still conflicted. The story hasn't played all the way out, I guess. Honestly on things like this, it's really hard to know.
We were in Key West. Vacation was winding down. But there was still just enough left for some excitement. We'd spent the last three nights in our tents out in the Dry Tortugas: surrounded by turquoise sea and bright sun. I was pleased that no one bought back much sunburn after days spent mostly in the water with shady siestas up in the old fort. That morning the girls and I had snorkeled the entire perimeter of the moat wall. It was a long calm float for the most part, filled with rainbow parrotfish, christmas tree worms, wrasses, and angelfish and one little juvenile yellow tang. The girls were so strong in the water, even through the one section where the wind was strong and the waves wanted to push them into the wall. And everything was so beautiful. Jazz made friends with the wrasses. Annie chased a barracuda. We struck camp together, sweating and loading all the bags and tents and coolers into the little pushcarts to get them back to the dock to be loaded. I had a pina colada on the ferry on the way back in. Life was so good.
There aren't a lot of places that sleep four on Key West that fit our budget. As much time as I have spent in the keys, in my adult life, I hadn't ever spent the night on Key West until 2014. I suppose that Roger spent some nights there in his Navy days, having dated a keys girl, but most of his nights then were in the barracks on Boca Chica. But recently I discovered that there is a hostel on Key West with a funny little front porch that has a few small, private, cement block rooms that works for us. It's a splurge, even as the cheapest option that comes up on Travelocity for Key West. But for the last keys night of summer family vacation, it's totally worth it.
That night, I even had bags pre-packed in the car with fresh clean clothes and toiletries, ready and waiting for those first showers back in cement block civilization. So we crammed all our salty camping bags from the ferry into the car, placed those fresh bags on top and drove the mile and a half to the other side of the island. We showered, I may have imbibed a shower rum and coke, and then we found ourselves walking the mile or so from the little hostel to another great splurge, the restaurant Blue Heaven.
The sun was setting as we made the walk. Transition from bright day to the coolness of the last real night of vacation. The girls skipped along ahead of us, climbing banyan roots and picking up frangipani blossoms. It felt so decadent not to be salty and to be shower-smoothed and not suntan-lotioned and wearing a fresh, if slightly creased, linen dress and pretty leather shoes.
Roger wasn't moving too well. He enjoyed his time on the island, but three nights of ground sleeping and three days of very bright sun had his Parkinson's symptoms really aggravated. He was happy walking and limping it out in the fading light, just slow. We were fine slowly meandering through the old houses and late summer blooms. The rest of the world loves the keys in winter. But give me a July or August vacation there any day. Sure it's hot, but not as hot as Tallahassee in the dog days, and you can spend the calm days out in that beautiful water. Rog and I held hands and bumped hips and called out to the ladies not to get too close to the chickens they chased.
Some people never find it
Some only pretend
I just want to live happily ever after
Every now and then
Some days you actually get to live the Jimmy Buffet lyrics. And Jimmy has a song about Blue Heaven, too, appropriately enough, which came into my head as we walked in and added ourselves to the list and acquiesced to the wait time.
It's a flashback kind of crowd
It's a cabaret sound
There's still some magic left
In this tourist town
Blue Heaven was a slice of heaven that night. Bar drinks for everyone (virgin smoothies for the girls and fun drinks for us) and the girls danced to a guitarist in the courtyard between the big old trees and the wooden buildings. Then we ended up with a table outside as the gloaming descended into full night, with candles and string lights under the old hardwoods and the palms.
The pan-fried snapper at Blue Heaven is simple and perfect with decadent lemony burre blanc. I'm not enough of a wine person to remember the white we picked, but it was a good match. Also, a bottle probably wasn't necessary because Rog only intended to have a glass. But it was all good.
Sitting around the table and discussing our days on the island had us starting to nod off until a band took the stage that required dancing. We even got Roger out on the floor for a bit, but that was when it happened. I got a little too close to the edge of the dance area and stepped off the pavers and onto something soft that gave a little, and down I fell, in a desperate attempt to not kill whatever I'd just happened upon. I had a girl's hand in each hand when it happened and so we all ended up in the pile, though Rog remained upright. And shockingly, as it turned out, the soft thing I'd encountered was part of another person, so there were four of us down there.
There was nervous laughter as the girls and I proclaimed no injuries but maybe bruised knees and barked shins. The woman, I'd tripped on didn't join in, and I bent further to look at her in the glowing light and the shadows between it's pools. How had I not seen her there earlier?
I'm a terrible judge of age, always seeing some variant of myself in people's faces when I examine them. She struck me as relatively unwrinkled, but the glistening eyes and lips in her smooth face did not strike me as young. "Oh! Are you okay?!" I asked.
She really looked at me, kneeling there beside her before answering quietly, and very gently taking the hand that I had outstretched instinctively. "No, I'm really not okay," her voice was rich and deep for such a small-framed person, "but you didn't hurt me just now."
And watching her answer- watching her eyes, I became aware of a deep sadness in her. Had she just been lying there in the shadows? And for how long? She had a very slight accent that I couldn't place, and wore a linen dress also, but hers was crisp and tailored. Her sandals looked expensive. I held her gaze after she finished speaking, and she seemed so tired and despondent. And despite the lightness of my own spirits that night, I thought I recognized her deep sorrow. It seemed so out of place with where we were, and it really shook me.
"Please come and sit with us," I offered impulsively. "Desert should be at the table soon." Rog just looked at me. I wondered if he was seeing what I was seeing; a bright spirit trapped behind a dark veil. I wondered how much of what I was seeing was my own foolishness, this woman's resemblance to an old friend that I missed, and the wine. She hadn't let go of my hand, though it seemed that the distance between us was lengthening again. I stood and pulled her up with me, and the lightness of her was improbable. She was taller than Rog, but very thin, ethereal.
The girls doubled up in a chair and she pulled in close to me and to them gracefully. Annie liked her necklace and her hands hovered toward it as if it to take it off and then she dropped them in her lap, explaining that she had had it since she was a girl.
No, there wasn't anyone we could call. She just needed. . . some time. The girls told her about synchronized swimming. She loved the water and kept them talking. Rog and I exchanged glances. He didn't seem to think I'd made a terrible choice bringing her to sit with us.
The check came and went. Rog declared that he was in no shape to walk back to the hostel. He and Jasper would get a pedi-cab. Annie wanted to walk with me. The woman wound up walking with us. She loved Key West, too- the gumbo limbos and the royal poinciana. It seemed that this wasn't her home either. We talked about trees and plants. She seemed so tired. When we got back to the hostel, I told her. I had an idea and bade her to sit on the porch while I got the girls to bed with Rog.
"Go," he told me, "I've got this," once everyone was in jammies.
She didn't want to go for a nightcap, but that hadn't been my plan. The hostel had a little courtyard between buildings with a hammock strung up. "You seem so tired," I told her, "I thought this might be good." We ended up sitting there together for a while. I told her more about our day and where I'd been, and she was right, I was tired too. We both ended up laying in the hammock, her body warming against mine. We didn't talk much that I remember. But I remember I said, "You may not believe this, but I've been unfathomably sad before. It's awful how tired it makes you feel, how it seems like you can't get out of it. But you can. It's really true that you can."
We discussed exchanging contact information and made a plan to do so, but the quiet swaying of the hammock got the best of me. I fell asleep under the palms and fell asleep hard. When I woke, it was past four and I was alone. She didn't leave her name or her number, but she did leave a note, elegantly written on the corner of one of the maps from the front desk. "Here's to getting through the blue. Thank you." I think it's still sitting in my wallet.
So, I got myself up and let myself back into our little room where I snuggled close to my husband and listened to Annie's gentle snoring. When I woke up again the next morning, Jimmy Buffet's Blue Heaven Rendezvous was stuck in my head and I was as ready to leave the island as I was going to get.
Those crazy days and crazy ways
We never want to un-do
We'll be together now and forever
At the blue heaven rendezvous
If these walls could talk
I don't know what they'd say
They've seen some accidental masquerades
But it's no surprise
Dances till dawn, heroes long gone
Just let that guitar play
__________________________
tonithegreat has another JB quote to use as a tag line for this one: "It's a semi-true story, believe me or not. I made up a few things, and there's some I forgot. But the life and the telling are both real to me, and they run like the rain all the way to the sea. . .."
This entry was composed for therealljidol, Season 10. Check out that community for lots of great writing from all kinds of folks. I highly recommend it.
If you enjoyed this piece, please remember me in idol-land and vote for it when the polls go up!
We were in Key West. Vacation was winding down. But there was still just enough left for some excitement. We'd spent the last three nights in our tents out in the Dry Tortugas: surrounded by turquoise sea and bright sun. I was pleased that no one bought back much sunburn after days spent mostly in the water with shady siestas up in the old fort. That morning the girls and I had snorkeled the entire perimeter of the moat wall. It was a long calm float for the most part, filled with rainbow parrotfish, christmas tree worms, wrasses, and angelfish and one little juvenile yellow tang. The girls were so strong in the water, even through the one section where the wind was strong and the waves wanted to push them into the wall. And everything was so beautiful. Jazz made friends with the wrasses. Annie chased a barracuda. We struck camp together, sweating and loading all the bags and tents and coolers into the little pushcarts to get them back to the dock to be loaded. I had a pina colada on the ferry on the way back in. Life was so good.
There aren't a lot of places that sleep four on Key West that fit our budget. As much time as I have spent in the keys, in my adult life, I hadn't ever spent the night on Key West until 2014. I suppose that Roger spent some nights there in his Navy days, having dated a keys girl, but most of his nights then were in the barracks on Boca Chica. But recently I discovered that there is a hostel on Key West with a funny little front porch that has a few small, private, cement block rooms that works for us. It's a splurge, even as the cheapest option that comes up on Travelocity for Key West. But for the last keys night of summer family vacation, it's totally worth it.
That night, I even had bags pre-packed in the car with fresh clean clothes and toiletries, ready and waiting for those first showers back in cement block civilization. So we crammed all our salty camping bags from the ferry into the car, placed those fresh bags on top and drove the mile and a half to the other side of the island. We showered, I may have imbibed a shower rum and coke, and then we found ourselves walking the mile or so from the little hostel to another great splurge, the restaurant Blue Heaven.
The sun was setting as we made the walk. Transition from bright day to the coolness of the last real night of vacation. The girls skipped along ahead of us, climbing banyan roots and picking up frangipani blossoms. It felt so decadent not to be salty and to be shower-smoothed and not suntan-lotioned and wearing a fresh, if slightly creased, linen dress and pretty leather shoes.
Roger wasn't moving too well. He enjoyed his time on the island, but three nights of ground sleeping and three days of very bright sun had his Parkinson's symptoms really aggravated. He was happy walking and limping it out in the fading light, just slow. We were fine slowly meandering through the old houses and late summer blooms. The rest of the world loves the keys in winter. But give me a July or August vacation there any day. Sure it's hot, but not as hot as Tallahassee in the dog days, and you can spend the calm days out in that beautiful water. Rog and I held hands and bumped hips and called out to the ladies not to get too close to the chickens they chased.
Some people never find it
Some only pretend
I just want to live happily ever after
Every now and then
Some days you actually get to live the Jimmy Buffet lyrics. And Jimmy has a song about Blue Heaven, too, appropriately enough, which came into my head as we walked in and added ourselves to the list and acquiesced to the wait time.
It's a flashback kind of crowd
It's a cabaret sound
There's still some magic left
In this tourist town
Blue Heaven was a slice of heaven that night. Bar drinks for everyone (virgin smoothies for the girls and fun drinks for us) and the girls danced to a guitarist in the courtyard between the big old trees and the wooden buildings. Then we ended up with a table outside as the gloaming descended into full night, with candles and string lights under the old hardwoods and the palms.
The pan-fried snapper at Blue Heaven is simple and perfect with decadent lemony burre blanc. I'm not enough of a wine person to remember the white we picked, but it was a good match. Also, a bottle probably wasn't necessary because Rog only intended to have a glass. But it was all good.
Sitting around the table and discussing our days on the island had us starting to nod off until a band took the stage that required dancing. We even got Roger out on the floor for a bit, but that was when it happened. I got a little too close to the edge of the dance area and stepped off the pavers and onto something soft that gave a little, and down I fell, in a desperate attempt to not kill whatever I'd just happened upon. I had a girl's hand in each hand when it happened and so we all ended up in the pile, though Rog remained upright. And shockingly, as it turned out, the soft thing I'd encountered was part of another person, so there were four of us down there.
There was nervous laughter as the girls and I proclaimed no injuries but maybe bruised knees and barked shins. The woman, I'd tripped on didn't join in, and I bent further to look at her in the glowing light and the shadows between it's pools. How had I not seen her there earlier?
I'm a terrible judge of age, always seeing some variant of myself in people's faces when I examine them. She struck me as relatively unwrinkled, but the glistening eyes and lips in her smooth face did not strike me as young. "Oh! Are you okay?!" I asked.
She really looked at me, kneeling there beside her before answering quietly, and very gently taking the hand that I had outstretched instinctively. "No, I'm really not okay," her voice was rich and deep for such a small-framed person, "but you didn't hurt me just now."
And watching her answer- watching her eyes, I became aware of a deep sadness in her. Had she just been lying there in the shadows? And for how long? She had a very slight accent that I couldn't place, and wore a linen dress also, but hers was crisp and tailored. Her sandals looked expensive. I held her gaze after she finished speaking, and she seemed so tired and despondent. And despite the lightness of my own spirits that night, I thought I recognized her deep sorrow. It seemed so out of place with where we were, and it really shook me.
"Please come and sit with us," I offered impulsively. "Desert should be at the table soon." Rog just looked at me. I wondered if he was seeing what I was seeing; a bright spirit trapped behind a dark veil. I wondered how much of what I was seeing was my own foolishness, this woman's resemblance to an old friend that I missed, and the wine. She hadn't let go of my hand, though it seemed that the distance between us was lengthening again. I stood and pulled her up with me, and the lightness of her was improbable. She was taller than Rog, but very thin, ethereal.
The girls doubled up in a chair and she pulled in close to me and to them gracefully. Annie liked her necklace and her hands hovered toward it as if it to take it off and then she dropped them in her lap, explaining that she had had it since she was a girl.
No, there wasn't anyone we could call. She just needed. . . some time. The girls told her about synchronized swimming. She loved the water and kept them talking. Rog and I exchanged glances. He didn't seem to think I'd made a terrible choice bringing her to sit with us.
The check came and went. Rog declared that he was in no shape to walk back to the hostel. He and Jasper would get a pedi-cab. Annie wanted to walk with me. The woman wound up walking with us. She loved Key West, too- the gumbo limbos and the royal poinciana. It seemed that this wasn't her home either. We talked about trees and plants. She seemed so tired. When we got back to the hostel, I told her. I had an idea and bade her to sit on the porch while I got the girls to bed with Rog.
"Go," he told me, "I've got this," once everyone was in jammies.
She didn't want to go for a nightcap, but that hadn't been my plan. The hostel had a little courtyard between buildings with a hammock strung up. "You seem so tired," I told her, "I thought this might be good." We ended up sitting there together for a while. I told her more about our day and where I'd been, and she was right, I was tired too. We both ended up laying in the hammock, her body warming against mine. We didn't talk much that I remember. But I remember I said, "You may not believe this, but I've been unfathomably sad before. It's awful how tired it makes you feel, how it seems like you can't get out of it. But you can. It's really true that you can."
We discussed exchanging contact information and made a plan to do so, but the quiet swaying of the hammock got the best of me. I fell asleep under the palms and fell asleep hard. When I woke, it was past four and I was alone. She didn't leave her name or her number, but she did leave a note, elegantly written on the corner of one of the maps from the front desk. "Here's to getting through the blue. Thank you." I think it's still sitting in my wallet.
So, I got myself up and let myself back into our little room where I snuggled close to my husband and listened to Annie's gentle snoring. When I woke up again the next morning, Jimmy Buffet's Blue Heaven Rendezvous was stuck in my head and I was as ready to leave the island as I was going to get.
Those crazy days and crazy ways
We never want to un-do
We'll be together now and forever
At the blue heaven rendezvous
If these walls could talk
I don't know what they'd say
They've seen some accidental masquerades
But it's no surprise
Dances till dawn, heroes long gone
Just let that guitar play
__________________________
tonithegreat has another JB quote to use as a tag line for this one: "It's a semi-true story, believe me or not. I made up a few things, and there's some I forgot. But the life and the telling are both real to me, and they run like the rain all the way to the sea. . .."
This entry was composed for therealljidol, Season 10. Check out that community for lots of great writing from all kinds of folks. I highly recommend it.
If you enjoyed this piece, please remember me in idol-land and vote for it when the polls go up!