April Miami Breezes

It's funny how our long term memories are so much deeper and poignant than our short term variety. My mother in law, now past 91, has crystal clear recall about events from her childhood and young adult years, even as she experiences early, creeping dementia. Her memories of growing up in a large, warm, and loving family in small city Poland give her so much pleasure. Weather and climate trigger many of my oldest memories. On the relatively rare cool nights in Miami, when neighbors light wood fires, the smell always takes me back to my adolescence, walking home on a Winter Long Island night, and how lovely it was. To this day, my cheap fire pit is my favorite possession, for exactly that reason. From 1970 through 1976 or so, my parents would take me to Miami each Winter and Spring Break. The first time we came, we checked into a higher end hotel on mid-Beach, called the Barcelona. It's no longer there, and my Dad hated the place. It was pretentious, and, as he said, every service person had their hand out, and for not providing service. My Mom's sister Lorraine and her adventurous husband Abe checked into a much lower rent place on South Beach, the Ocean Haven. This was before South Beach was South Beach -- it was a decaying area of extremely elderly Jews, going to early bird specials, collecting pensions, and waiting to die. My grandmother Anna was one of them -- she was a snowbird who lived at the Edward Hotel on Collins (still there), which she pronounced "EdVard." Seeing the better beach, and how much fun there was to be had, my Dad moved us to the Ocean Haven. Later, he found a better place next door, the Seacrest, and this became a twice a year family tradition. One year, he paid for my sister, brother in law, and baby nephew to come, as well. Another year, when I was 15, we brought my childhood friend Michael Monahan -- his first time on an airplane. When we got to Lummus Park, Michael scurried up a palm tree and got us some coconuts. My parents were so happy on those trips. My Mom was with her beloved sister, and Miami Beach was a natural habitat for my Dad. He loved the ocean so, and got a kick out of the culture -- it was a transplant of the Jewish Bronx he knew as a boy. Abe and Lorraine, and my cousins Michael and Janet, were awesome. Michael had a conversion van, and evenings we'd go cruising in it -- I was 13 or 14 and felt so much older. Michael was 5 years my senior,and a role model. He was a cool teenager, and enjoyed having a little brother around. But back to the memory trigger. I remember well the smell of the air when we'd come in Spring. It was warmer, and it always seemed breezier, than when we visited in December. It was truly, well, tropical. This morning I saddled up the weird rescue dog for an early walk. As I stepped outside, the breeze and smell were there. We live about a mile from Biscayne Bay, but the smell took me to South Beach in the 70s. The air FELT the same. Those were fine years of my youth. It's so nice to go back there in memory. I see my Mom, sitting on a beach chair, chatting happily with Lorraine. They were two beauties who married very well -- my Dad and Abe were typical Greatest Generation guys who did well in business -- certainly relative to their poor, Depression era childhoods. They talked of their kids and friends gone by. Dad is there in the impossibly bright Miami sun, bare chested, and inhaling the sea air deeply, and saying to me "Dave -- this just SMELLS like good health!" It's so lovely how a simple breeze and scent in the wind can bring you back so far.