I didn’t want to go to the beach.
I’d planned an extra day on a business trip to Florida to visit a relative. An emergency drew her away. My nonrefundable ticket kept me there.
The pressures of the week tempted me to stay by my laptop in the Holiday Inn. But it seemed like a shame to be in in Florida yet not see it.
So, armed with a map from the desk clerk, I set off for the beach. My route took me along a residential street planted with banyans, trees with aerial prop roots that seem to threaten to strangle the life out of their parent. So different from the sedate maples, oaks, and pines of my suburban north.
In most of the yards, tropical exotica reigned. But I recognized the long, leggy impatiens pushing up. Back home, it’s too early to plant anything. There’s another month for frost to visit.
Fifteen minutes brought me to a public beach, its half-dozen palapas already claimed by beach chairs and towels, but few bodies. I sat in the shade of one body-less palapa, figuring I’d be gone before the owner could take offense.
The damp sand stuck to the long pants shielding my pale winter skins. Not very comfortable. So I got up for a walk along the ocean’s edge. The deep pink interior of a seashell claimed my eye. Lots of frilled little shells dotted in the sand. I plucked a few as a souvenir for Iggy.
A family of four looked down at beach that had been washed by waves just minutes earlier. The grandmother snapped a photo. Then the boy in floral surfing shorts digs his hand under a live sand dollar and scoops it up to deposit it in the water.
Ten yards off shore, a fin cuts across the waves. Must be a dolphin. Something I’d never spot at a northern beach.
A black duck wears a red face mask that darts around its golden eyes with black irises before meeting at the back of its head. A black feather Mohawk escapes atop. “Don’t feed ‘em or you’ll have ‘em crapping all over the place,” says a potbellied man as the duck waddles across the floor next to the beachside concession stand. A bicycle mirror is clipped to his eyeglasses–the man’s, not the duck’s.