Chapter 1: Movin' on Up
The deck outside my mother’s apartment wasn’t very large. I struggled to fit the huge lounge chair I had picked up at the Wal-Mart across the street from my Orlando apartment earlier that week, but I was determined to lay out and get some sun. It was unexpectedly warm, despite it being late December, almost Christmas. Of course, I was in the Keys, Big Pine, to be exact, where my mother had taken up residence just a little before Thanksgiving. It was just too nice to pass up. Lying outside, lounging in paradise, basking in relaxation; I was all for it.
Before my mother moved there, my best friend told me that I should have been a lobbyist. When Mom called telling me that she was interested in a management position at Coach in the Keys, I began to argue every possible reason that my mother should move there. It would be a new beginning, which Mom was in desperate need of. I would be only half a days drive, and an even quicker flight from her. She would make new friends, be able to lounge on her days off, feel like it was vacation even when she had to work.
In all honesty, I just wanted an even more tropical place to visit. Needless to say, my mother made out on her end of the deal, she virtually got retirement there in paradise. When she finally decided she would move, I bought her a hammock and a straw sun hat to finalize the plans and flew up to Maine the week before Thanksgiving, helping the movers pack her belongings and flew alongside the woman who had raised me to the Keys to get her settled in.
When my last day of work before the holidays finally arrived, I bid adieu to my co-workers and hopped aboard a shuttle that would take me just down the street to the Orlando International Airport. Palm trees lined SR 436 on the way there and I once again wondered to myself how I had gotten so lucky to live in such a place. I wondered when the honeymoon would be over, when it would feel like “the old grind”, but it never seemed to. And now? 10 beautiful days in the Keys.
I felt that this was owed to me. I had worked over Thanksgiving and on every holiday imaginable. I had worked overtime and extra hours without ever being compensated. And now I had 10 days all to myself and my mom and the ocean and beach.
The flight was a quick one and I opted to rent a jeep, a gift to myself for working hard and making my own way in this world. It was a bit pricy, but it seemed appropriate. It felt like my mother and I were both “movin’ on up”, having done enough penance to last a lifetime and finally being cut a break. I could not have imagined life being much better and I really didn’t want to push my luck.
As I drove my bright green jeep down the single lane highway that lead from Key West to Big Pine, I drank in the lush beauty of the islands. I had thought that Orlando was beautiful but this place was something else. The ocean was a fine mixture of green and blue and the waves were frothy as they washed against the shoreline or the boats. I turned up the volume to my Destiny’s Child CD that I had been listening to almost non-stop since my purchase of it in May earlier that year.
The wind blew in my long brown hair and the air had only a slight crispness to it. I could not believe my luck that it was still over 85 degrees on the islands. What a year for weather! It would be like a Summer Christmas! I giggled to myself at the obsurd thought of a Santa Claus in bathing suit and scuba gear.
I was almost to my mother’s apartment.
Summer Christmas
Chapter 2
NinasFiction
NinasFeet
