Somewhere in my negative files, there is a photo of a pair of well-worn boots. I shot them because, even empty, they stood like the man who wore them: one foot out, slightly cocked to one side. He was my last college boyfriend, and he was a junkie. Oh, he was clean, more or less, the time we were together, but he taught me that once a junkie, always a junkie. You might be clean and sober, but you are still a junkie. It was he who took me to that first Springsteen show at the Miami Jai Alai fronton. Somewhere I still have the photo he gave me from that night: Bruce from the back, a heart-shaped sweat stain on the ass of his jeans, blurry with the motion of Bruce whipping his knit hat from his head as he danced.

Why the melancholy reminiscence, you may ask? Because his death notice was in the alumni newsletter this week. It took all of my google-fu to find his obituary, and discover that he’d died in October of last year. I wrote our mutual friend: Why didn’t you tell me? Because he didn’t know, either. None of us knew. And that makes me sad, and a little angry. His on-line guest book is full of love and thanks from his patients and friends, because when he finally did get clean, he became an addiction therapist. Teach what you know, I guess. And he had a gift, apparently.

Reading the guest book made me sad for the man I didn’t know: the one who was generous and kind, something that we only saw glimpses of in school. He was filthy rich, but never let anyone know. He was always bumming a buck for a beer, never had anything less than a fifty, and couldn’t break it. It was a shock to me when I finally found out about the family money. I went down from Boston to meet him in New York City, and he took me to meet his grandfather. There’s something you need to know before we get there, he said. I’m rich. No. Really rich. Granddad owns the building we’re going to on Central Park West. He moved to the penthouse after Grandmother died and he didn’t need twelve rooms anymore. Now he only has seven. In the penthouse. It was his grandfather who convinced me that I shouldn’t waste my time on Boston, but move to NYC. It’s all happening out there he said, with a sweeping gesture, out his window overlooking the park. And it was. And I did.

When we left, Eric shook a paper bag at me. It clanged. The rest of the set I was born with, he grinned, showing me a silver service for eight. He hocked it. He went back to shooting dope, and begged me to come back to Miami for him. He pleaded with me. He wanted to marry me. I had to come back from New York. So I did. And found him living in filth in the Grove, where he apologized for dragging me away from the city, because in the month it took me to get my affairs in order and leave, he had met an eighteen year old girl, fallen in love, bought her a five carat canary diamond, and was over me. I never spoke to him again, although I knew what went on through mutual friends.

He ran through his inheritance. He was disowned. He moved to Arizona. He got clean. He was welcomed back into his family. He had families of his own. He became respected, loved and the man whose potential we had only seen in passing. And now he has passed. I’m sad that those of us who knew him when and loved him anyway weren’t told. But I don’t know. Had he disowned his past? I’ll never know. But I will find that photo of the boots.

Yesterday the Gulf was as rough and pounding as the Atlantic. The waves were relentless, and the tide, not quite a rip, but we went in the water to try and body surf and before we could catch the first wave, we were 50 feet south of where we’d gone in. There was no swimming back, you had to wade in the shallows, and even then, it was a battering. Shelling was, as Star put it, like shooting fish in a barrel. You just plucked them from the cut-away dune, or waited for the dunes to calve like ice bergs, revealing a fresh strata of shells. I have conches and olives, augers and scallops, tulips and whelks. I even found a couple of cones, but they aren’t in the best shape.

It’s all good. Last night the storms came in from the Gulf, lightning and thunder through the night. This morning, the gulf is mostly flat, the drifts of shells that were there at dusk have been covered by sand, and the beach is soft and flat. To live by the sea is a charmed and charming life, I think.

On Saturday, the RLA and I set off for the Gulf Coast. Star was caravanning with us, and the SisterGirlFriendGirl and her partner were heading south from Tennessee, to meet up at the beach. We headed across the state on Alligator Alley, known in my youth as Death Alley, for reasons that should be obvious. Nowadays, it’s two lanes in each direction, and plans are afoot for a third lane. This year, there seemed to be tons of delaminated tires, to the point that I started referring to the drive as the Trail of Tires. (Say that with a Southern accent for the full humor.) At some point, we hit a chunk of tire, shortly thereafter someone’s rim sailed past. Shortly after that, we hit a 10-mile long dead stop traffic jam. And shortly after that, smoke started pouring from under the hood of the PT Cruiser, and we pulled to the side of the road. I debated the odds of the car bursting into flame, and whether or not I needed to begin an emergency evacuation of our week’s worth of luggage, food, pillows, noodles and odds and ends. While I was doing that, the RLA opened the hood of the car, and I began to panic, thinking that fire responds to air by getting much larger. In the event, it wasn’t an engine fire, it was just that we had lost all of our engine coolant.

Star doubled back and sat with us until AAA arrived. The tow driver discovered that the AAA mechanic in Sarasota was a mere 97 miles from the point of our breakdown, and with AAA plus, we were eligible for a free 100 mile tow. So. We got towed all the way to Sarasota, where Star came and rescued us and brought us and our tons of crap back to the beach house. We settled in, walked the beach to the burger bar down the way, and by the time we got back, SisterGirlFriendGirl and SisterSqueeze were waiting for us on our lanai.

Tomorrow MJ, RJ and their cat JJ arrive for the remainder of the week. Photos will be posted later. Time for me to hit the beach and soak these aging bones.

EDITED TO ADD PHOTOS

The copperleaf hedge is in bloom. Can you see the flowers? I shot this in the morning, as I was leaving for work, and so the color is true morning light, and the drops of water are, I think, condensing dew, and not late night rain. Click on the image to open a pop-up window at full (huge) size.

As ever, this is part of the Nature Notes meme.

I came home from work today to find the lawn crew hard at work. The recent month-long deluge has taken my parched and patchy lawn and turned it into a lush sprawl of green, and when I went out to fill the feeders this morning, there were purple wild flowers in the back yard that reached to my knees. They’d just finished mowing, and the scent of fresh-cut grass was heavy in the moist air. I flashed back to a Sunday afternoon when I was six or seven. I was in the back yard, on the swing my father had built for me. My brother was mowing the lawn and my father was tending a grill he’d made out of an old oil barrel, cut in half. I remember being aware at that moment, that life was full, and good. Perfect. I recognized that it was a memory I’d have forever.

Well, it’s fifty years later, and all it took was one whiff to send me back in time.

It’s been pouring, day after day. The poinciana tree can’t hold on to its leaves. The feathery fronds are shedding in the daily deluge. The water pools up in the driveway and then recedes, absorbed back into the earth, giving Florida a much-needed reprieve against the on-going drought. This is the detritus along that water line.