I’m Back and Sun Bitten

cce — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:25:40 +0000

I’m back. Well, back in the way that any person is back from a tropical vacation…back to laundry and meal planning, back to the effort of regaining the normal flow of our daily lives, all while trying to right our plummeting moods, fighting the mild depression ushered in by the bleak February sky, the whispers of snow and ice. I can feel the easy fun of seven days of warmth and sunshine quickly dissipate as we bump up against the same old confines of our winter space. And since I forgot to pack the camera, I don’t even have photo documentation of our week. We will have to rely on olfactory memory, salt shore breezes, chlorinated pools, the faux coconut slick of suntan lotion. The children are a healthy brown with the glow of sunshine, their hair streaked surfer-blond, their eyes holding the color of an impossibly blue Florida sky. They are the proof of our escape. And then there’s me…a peeling, blistered wreck of a wretch who, though warned about the dangers of Doxycycline and direct sun light, really didn’t believe in all that… until now.

I thought I’d done enough. I applied sunblock, liberally and often. I wore baseball hats and visors. I sought shade in the shifting shadows of palm trees and pool umbrellas. And, still, by day two my skin was the red of rare meat and open wounds. I began to use a floppy hat that provided shade clear out to my shoulders. I carried a parasol to avoid the sun while walking from car to house. I jogged early while morning steam still drifted from canals and ponds and wet grass. I bought golfing gloves to wear while playing tennis to try and stall the heat rash creeping up my wrists and around my fingers. I wore the one pair of long pants and the sole long sleeved t-shirt I had brought, each and every day, exclusively, washing the outfit each night so I could wear it again the following day. And for the most part, I staved off further damage. I saved my hands and the tops of my feet and my shoulders.

But I couldn’t salvage my lips. Blisters formed, cracking ensued. By week’s end I was forced to drink everything from a straw. Now, two days home and I am still straw dependent. This is the way I consume everything: coffee, wine, my meals – straw inserted to a place within the mouth that ensures no liquid will touch the yellowed pustules that weep and bleed and were once my lips. I am taking medication to dull the pain of second degree burns. I avoid outings. Afraid of what the cold and the wind will do to my fragile mouth. I made one trip to the grocery yesterday. I wrapped a scarf around the lower half of my face to protect the sores. The wool got stuck in the wounds and I wept while unwrapping the fuchsia scarf, wet with blood.

Sore and sorry for myself, I am ill equipped to deal with the children’s questions about why we decided to move away from South Florida. “But it’s so much fun there, Mom. Why did we have to move HERE where there are no leaves, no sunshine, no beaches strewn with exquisite shells – Venus Sun Rays, Calico Scallops, Conchs and Sand Dollars?” The gesture to the scene beyond our icy windows. All is bleak, brittle with brown and gray and patchy white.

I decided to skip the condition of my face as adequate explanation and instead began a protracted discussion about how the life we once lived in South Florida had nothing to do with the vacation we just enjoyed. How our everyday existence there was not spent at heated pools or taking Catamaran trips to uninhabited beaches, that we rarely visited the zoo and everyday had school and mosquitoes and the dreaded commute to and from work with which to contend. I explained that our daily, non-vacation lives in Florida was much the same as our life in Massachusetts save for the fact that our house was much, much smaller, the schools abysmal and our weekends were spent conjuring ways to invite ourselves to use pools and boats that we ourselves couldn’t afford to possess.

For awhile this convinced them, until G blurted out that she’d rather attend a BAD school and wear sandals every day then have to go to a GOOD school in snow boots. It’s a sound argument. Foot wear is as good a gauge for mental health and general attitude as any.

But then I reminded them of the giddy rush that is the first warm day of spring, the seasonal shift that offers up warmth and sunshine and the opportunity to wear open toed shoes that is, after a long winter of fleece and water proof Kamiks, like the first embrace, a thousand flirty kisses, this tickle of new love. Here, unlike Florida, I explained, it happens year after year. That one day each spring that ushers in the flush and flutter of new beginnings. The giddy gleeful start of something better. We do not have to remarry or adopt a puppy or purchase a new car to experience this thrill of new love. We just have to endure a long winter and wait for Spring. It will come, kids, I assured them, and you will be positively feverish with the glee of it. And, if all goes well, by then I will be drinking from a glass and free to go out doors without applying Vaseline and lip prophylactics. All will be well again.

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I’m Back and Sun Bitten