Having Hurricane Irma arrive two years ago in the middle of the night before my birthday then waking up to no power on my birthday was no fun, particularly in Florida in the summer. I survived two days with no air conditioning only because it was in the low 80s the first couple days after the hurricane went right over the top of us. There appears to be a grace period after a hurricane when it’s drier and less hot than before the storm.
On the morning of the third day of no air conditioning, with temperatures forecast to go back into the 90s that day, my friends got me to safety and air conditioning at another friend’s house, where I stayed for two more days attempting to get my core body temperature down. I fell in the bathroom after two days there and ended up in the Emergency Room because my blood pressure was ridiculously low. After four or five hours in the morgue-like air conditioning of the ER, I returned home, where power had finally been restored.
My body temperature was back to normal, but that bout with heat exhaustion had lasting effects on me, as did the move six weeks later to a new house, where I am still. I have had heat exhaustion too many times to count. I got it the first time in 1984. As a result of that experience, I have spent the past 35 years trying not to get hot. I know, moving back to Florida wasn’t the greatest idea with a goal like that, but it was something I had to do. My buddy needed me to be here for her. I just didn’t know why until after I got here.
This is where intuition comes in handy. For nine months, I had been clearing out my bookshelves and my house overlooking Puget Sound with a view to moving back to Florida. Did I want to leave Washington state? Oh no. I very much wanted to stay. Did I know why I was moving back? Not exactly. I suspected it had to do with my friend’s or my mother’s health. As it turns out, it has been both and my health as well. All I really knew then was that I was being summoned by heaven to report back to Florida, where I had spent the first 25 years of my life.
I had been blessed to lived in the Asheville area of North Carolina for eight years snd spent another seventeen years in the Puget Sound region near Seattle. Both areas are noticeably cooler usually than Florida. Moving all the way to Seattle illustrates the lengths to which I will go to stay cool.
After an arduous journey in a moving van, dragging my Honda Civic behind me all the way, and lugging my three cats and me in and out of hotels every morning and night, I finally arrived in Central Florida a lot worse for the wear and tear of packing and loading up what was left of my life as an autonomous free spirit. Three days after my arrival, my best buddy and lifelong friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Lo and behold, there I was with my two cats (my oldest cat, Dustin, had died two days after our arrival), awaiting divine assignment. Ahem.
On the fourth day after my arrival, my buddy underwent surgery. I took care of her cats and house while she was in the hospital. Her cousins and a dear friend stayed with her while she was in the hospital. I stayed with my two cats and my friend’s five cats. Her boy Jack needed twice daily insulin injections for his diabetes, so someone definitely needed to be focused on her babies while she focused on her health crisis. I was that somebody. Had I not been being urged incessantly from within to downsize and get back to Florida as soon as possible since fall (my favorite time of year out there), things would have gone differently. I’m not saying that no one would have been there, but my buddy didn’t have had to worry that someone who loved her fur babies was right there in her house, keeping the home fires burning, so to speak, so she could focus on getting through that ordeal with the help of others.
When she came home, I took on the job of tending her incision site and changing her bandages, driving her to and from various doctor appointments, making sure we had food, and cleaning up after seven felines, most of whom were primarily indoor kitties. That’s a lot of cat box duty, I’m here to tell you, but if I had it to do all over, I would do it without hesitation. That’s how important my friend is to me.
A few years later the tables turned, and I was the in need of a surrogate cat mom for my babies and someone to take care of me. The friend I had cared for and moved back here for became my care taker. The roles had reversed in a big way, and I learned how truly hard it is for me to be taken care of at that level.
I had gone through an earlier bout of cancer with my friend while I was living in North Carolina. I was closer and circumstances were such that I was able to drop everything and drive to Florida in the middle of the night to be with her in the hospital and check on her cats. She had to have emergency surgery when her ovary exploded, spewing cancerous cells throughout her abdominal cavity. I was afraid I was going to lose her then, but she made it through that with amazing courage and strength.
The following month, I flew back to Florida to spend a week with my friend while she underwent a complete hysterectomy. We joked that they should have velcroed her back together after the first surgery so they could just open her up again without the use of surgical steel. During that stay, I slept in a hospital chair beside her so she knew she wasn’t alone. I stayed with her for a week to make sure she was okay. Then I flew back to Asheville and grad school while she went to stay at her father’s house once she began chemotherapy.My friend survived the two surgeries and beat that battle with cancer. She never even lost her hair from the chemo. Once she beat the breast cancer years later, silly me thought she might catch a break, but on one trip to the oncologist, a year or two later, they discovered that she had a treatable form of leukemia. That is in remission too now, although she’s experiencing some other related health issues that have resulted in a couple of hospital stays recently.Why am I sharing all this? I’m not sure really except to explain why I moved away from a place I loved so much and why I won’t be leaving any time soon. As long as my buddy is here, I’m shelving my desire to return to the Pacific Northwest. It might be my favorite location in the world to live to live, but being near my friend and my mother are higher priorities in my life. I’m fortunate to have found my adult home even if I don’t go back any time soon. I used to long for “a place where I can feel at home,” as I wrote in a song back in the early 80s. It took over ten more years to find it, but I did find it and cherished my time there for seventeen years.Will I ever move back? That all depends on what else happens in the future. Until then, I remain always a little homesick yet certain that I am where I belong at this time in my life, no matter how much the situation may chafe periodically.
