Chasing Ghosts

...under the royal poinciana

Can you go home again? I stepped into the Ft. Lauderdale airport terminal from the jetway. Not, as in my youth, coming down the long steps from a plane on the tarmac outside. This airport is familiar, new and old. Claiming my bag, I exit from the chilled interior into the blast of tropical air. Sweltering, filled with the fumes of cars and busses. The cacophony of honking demands for movement, stopping, going. I love the frenetic pace of this. The juxtaposition of shiny green palms and purple and white flowering oleander between the black roadway and bland cement parking garage. I sit on the bench waiting for the rental car shuttle, thinking most of the people working here were not born yet when I worked at this airport over 50 years ago. I am home again and the memories rise, gossamer ghosts from my subconscious, of heat, of place, of love and loss.

perpetual summertime

Can I be in this place as I once was? As a child, we moved to south Florida from New York after my father died. I learned to grieve in this perpetual summer. We lived with my grandparents in a new house with speckled terrazzo floors cooling the rooms. There were expansive glass doors to open, letting in light and the tropical breeze scented with gardenia. They put in a pool and my mother taught us to swim. My brothers and I ran wild in empty lots and the sugarcane field at the end of our unfinished street of new houses being built. After the cane fields were burnt, we would scour the ground for sections and happily suck out the remaining sugar juice. We harassed cows in pasture land, daring the bull to chase us as we jumped the fence. Until we were called home by my grandmother’s loud whistle. Even the cat ran up the front walk with us at the sound.

“10-10, 31st and Pierce”

This is the corner from which that childhood flowed. This is the corner recognized as my mother’s home when I went to work in law enforcement, taking a break there with the radio announcement “10-10, 31st and Pierce.” I thought I’d revisit that home site and the languid routes of my youth to the beaches, along the Intracoastal waterway, through wide streets of wealthy neighborhoods lined with looming Royal Palms. Instead, on this summer evening, as the heat of the day dissipated with the setting sun, I find ghosts along the way. The pink two story Art Deco apartment building sits enticingly on the waterfront. Those many years ago, I was called there to find a man who died alone. His life blood spread wide on the bare floor. He sits in the rattan chair on worn tropical print cushions. The room, devoid of any personal items, whispers his tragic story.

I continue on this city tour, downtown, around the wide traffic circle, bustling with cars jockeying for position, pedestrians ambling past storefronts and restaurants. Crisscrossing railroad tracks, I’m reminded I saved a life at this crossing. A rider ejected off the back of a motorcycle as it crossed the tracks, her helmet leaving her before her head met the pavement. Stopped at the cross traffic light, I watched it unfold and was the first one there to render aid. She breathed again, then disappeared into the back of an ambulance and I wrote reports. She will always exist at that intersection now.

the Royal Poinciana

Following another ambitious route from home, takes me through an industrial park, underneath the freeway, and along the airport perimeter road. There is a park there now, a respite of tropical foliage, benches to watch the flights, paths to stroll, and filled with bright orange blossomed Royal Poinciana. When I last saw her among the crowd, gaunt and hollow-eyed, before she disappeared into the black night, it was under a Poinciana. She was 16 years old and months before reported as a runaway. Kicked out of her home, really, by her mother’s new boyfriend. In my dreams of that memory, the Poinciana is on fire, burning and smoldering blossoms falling around the soon to be arrested traffickers and drug dealers. We are all cast in the eerie glow of the flames as skeletons, immobile in the destruction of beauty and life.

There is one more ghost to chase. This time it will be a familiar journey to the Florida Keys in the shared grief and love of family. This route is filled with memories of vacations with my brother’s family, our children, cousins cavorting in the wilds of Florida beaches, rented ocean side apartments, and catamaran sailing. It is the memories of my niece, lost too soon, that we seek. Meeting in the place she loved, finding her in the warm water and coral reef. I’m comforted by time spent with family and friends, sharing laughter, food, and the familiar flora and fauna. My sister-in-law and I will make our traditional, multiple grocery store runs. We have a story for and time to savor food my niece loved. Italian butter cookies, very specific cannoli, grocery store fried chicken. I’ll sit with my brother in the familiar silence of observing a life we built, in the sorrow of lost time. More ably we bear it, shared. This ghost is a lighthearted gossamer companion where we find her.

On the return journey to the airport to leave this place, I’ll stop and stay a while under a Royal Poinciana. The vibrant orange blossoms reminding me of those family adventures, sticky sweet smelling gardenias and tomatoes warm from the vine in my mother’s garden. The shade beneath the broad branches bringing to mind the summer evenings on the Intracoastal, the bite of salted air spiced with the smell of fuel, watching sleek boats with bulging white sails full of wind.

Chasing ghosts that make this place home.