Tribute to a favorite place

A special friend of my family, Bill Smith, passed away this summer.  He followed his wife, Betsy, by approximately a year.  The Smiths were my mom's next door neighbors in Mariemont, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cincinnati.  When my mother's parents passed, Betsy and Bill Smith became an extension of her family, and mine, when my parents married.  Events like Thanksgiving meals and Christmas day visits to the Smiths became tradition for me as a child, and I think back to those days with longing and wishes to duplicate the feelings derived from the experiences.

In the late 1960's or perhaps the early 70's, Bill and Betsy Smith bought a duplex on a Florida island called Anna Maria.  South of Tampa and just north of Sarasota, it sits in the Gulf of Mexico, making itself available with just two bridges from the mainland.  In October of 1976, I made my first voyage to Florida with my parents and sister, my Grandma Dorothy, and my Uncle David and Aunt Barbara.  Of course, it was to Anna Maria Island.  My family stayed in the left, and larger side of the duplex.  My relatives stayed on the right.  Driving from the Tampa Airport to the island, I can visualize tall palms against the late afternoon sun through the rear window of the rental car, and understand now the beginning of a love affair with this state blooming in a young mind and heart.

I remember driving there with my family in our Jeep Wagoneer, and listening to Elvis all the way home as he had just left our world.  For most of the 80's, Anna Maria was the spring break destination for myself, my sister, and my mom, who would sell Tampax stock to pay for our airfare.  I brought my close buddy, Rick, there for two consecutive years in high school.  In college, I brought Laura there for the first time.  Betsy and Bill actually encouraged us to marry some day.  We did.  We have traveled there with Emma and Harrison, my parents, and my sister's family.  The last time we went, we took our good friends, who claimed that part of Florida was unlike any other they had seen.  To this day, my son, Harrison, occasionally mentions that we "really need to get back to Anna Maria."  I don't disagree.

The following is an ode to the island.  A love song.  I believe I wrote it on the back of a couple of postcards during a trip in 2000 or 2001.  Nothing has changed.

Anna Maria

Your latitude is such that the rays

of the sun shine radiantly,

bathing your lush foliage and

sand white shorelines in a swath

of ultraviolet persuasion.

It’s a Technicolor oasis that at once

bedazzles and terrifies the eyes

with its clarity of shape and form.

In the confines of your tiny perimeter,

blooms of deep, luscious pinks and whites

comparable only to a Yankee snow thrust

out and sway decadently if a breeze

from the Gulf saunters through,

but mostly hang in an Island stillness,

from the defensive arms of plants

whose magical gift is to exist in

more hues of green than is logical

to man’s eyes. 

Move outward in any direction to the

blankets of crushed rock and shell,

pulverized to a fine, finger caressing smoothness,

the Island’s pride, its trip to the bank.

And no one’s surprised, what with its

suggestive contrast to the Gulf of Mexico,

a glowing  turquoise giving way to deeper

tints of blue, home to scads of fish,

roaming dolphins, occasional sharks,

and the vulnerable manatee.

Two age worn piers, reaching out

into  the water, run parallel as they

connect land and sea,

drawing us out farther, yet never

too far from this haven, this Island.