"Florida State Line," read the sign.
Maybe a little neutral, I thought. After all, we are still in the South, the land of hospitality. About six hundred miles ago, we had been welcomed to Georgia with a big swirly sign, welcomed back to Tennessee when the highway dog-legged backward, and then welcomed back into Georgia five minutes later.
The welcome sign came a few miles later, the "O" a big Florida orange. It just happens to be the reason we are in Florida, for Craig's job doing citrus research with the USDA. As the miles continued to fly by, I watched the terrain and felt that I was welcome. It was green like Kentucky (California is brown all year round in comparison) but a different green: more vibrant, springy, yellow-green crayon. I was also surprised to see pine trees growing along the highway interspersed with the expected palm trees.
Driving east on Highway 60 about thirty miles from the coast, we saw a rainbow in the clouds right over Vero Beach, our new home.
"If our lives were a movie, it would be pretty lame right now. This is such a cliche!" I exclaimed.
"Yep," Craig shot back. Now all we need is little woodland creatures to surround our car and cavort and gambole along with us as we make our way there!"
The mood of expectation and promise was not exactly fulfilled by our first night in Vero Beach. Driving into the garage of our Internet-selected rental house, we were met by the realtor.
"I'm sorry, but it's really hot inside," she apologized.
"That's okay!" I chimed sanguinely, thinking she had just come by to turn things on.
"No, it's not. The air conditioner isn't working." And it WAS hot inside, a steamy 85 degrees of Welcome to Florida weather. We did the walkthrough and an emergency diaper change on the kitchen counter, all the while marveling at the thrumming presence of the heat. The situation was complicated by the fact that we arrived on Labor Day. An emergency service call was not put through until evening, late enough only to conform that the unit was too iced up to diagnose.
The temperature inside was still climbing, and the realtor informed us the heat index that day was 103 degrees. We were all sweating and exhausted, the babies worst of all. So, after unpacking the car and making a few cursory overtures towards furniture placement, we repacked the crew and headed to an America's Best Value Inn a few miles away. It was not the first night in our new city we had meticulously prepared for, squirreling away bedding and towels in the back of our van. Devon, the original Social Child, doesn't shut down unless he's alone in his own bed, so it was after midnight when he finally stopped making faces at us and laid down to sleep in his pack-and-play.
Wide awake the next morning, I headed to breakfast at the stroke of six with Carrie in her carseat. I later found out that the hotel clock was set a half hour late (to convince guests to check out sooner?) and it was really 5:30. Craig and I then scrambled to get back to the house for the promised first visit from the HVAC guy, only to find out that they had scheduled us for four that afternoon. So, in an effort to keep cool we took a drive around town, and I once again got to experience the fun of nursing two babies in the driver's seat of the van with the engine running while Craig and Devon visited a park.
While the movers stumbled in and out of our house with boxes and furniture, we didn't have to worry about leaving the doors closed. It was the same relentless dampen-the-carpets moist heat inside and out, not really helpful in the already stressful situation. The crew leader came in and arranged our inventory on the counter, telling us to check off each numbered item as the unloaders read the numbers on the red tags. We soon wondered why there were so many items that didn't match the inventory, and so many duplicates.
Our move to Kentucky was tagged in green four years ago, many tiny tags remained because they are virtually impossible to remove. One of the movers was reading the numbers on the first tag he saw, green or red. We explained to him that he needed to read the red tags, and he cheerfully agreed and kept on making the same mistake.
He was obviously red-green colorblind. Oops!
"Well, I just feel sorry for him," said my compassionate mother-in-law. "He's obviously got some sort of mild cerebral palsy. You can tell by the way he walks."
I watched him closely as he headed out the door to get another stack of boxes. He held his head crooked, regarding us always out of his sunglassed right eye. His gait featured a swivel that turned one foot inward, left shoulder four inches higher than the right. With each step, he swung and curled his left arm around as if to tap his crotch.
"That's not a motor disorder. He's doing that on purpose. It's a wannabe gangster walk," I said. Six years teaching public school and I have that one down.
"No!" her eyebrows flew up to her hairline in surprise.
"Yes! The colorblind mover thinks he's P. Diddy!"
Devon handled the chaos better than we did. He beamed at each of our belongings as if receiving the item for the very first time. He gestured wildly at each round light fixture, exclaiming "A BALL"! Since his toys were packed and he had little to do, he compensated by playing with the shelf paper...
and helping Daddy put things together. I tried not to miss the oddest things about our old house: the rabbit that lived under our deck stairs, my yellow living room, my trash-can drawer in the kitchen. Instead, I focused on the new and handy features of our new house: the soaker tub in the master bathroom and the formal dining room we're outfitting as a play room.
Not everybody's day was as busy. The twins sweated out the day in their new bedroom, which remains completely empty because we haven't bought them any furniture yet. The HVAC guy eventually came and fixed the AC, and it was hard to even notice the addition of one more person popping in and out.
Things finally started to calm down. A few woodland creatures even showed up to welcome us. Imagine seeing that in your back yard. It's a sandhill crane, I found out later. It wasn't the only wildlife of the day. Craig picked a dried leaf off our bathroom floor.
It wasn't a leaf. It was a dessicated frog.
At the end of the day, Craig and I decided to take another drive to unwind, made peaceful by his parents offering to stay at home with the kids. I told him I was "so not in the mood" to wade for the first time in the Atlantic Ocean, but he took me anyway.
It turns out, you don't have to be in the mood. As the bathtub-warm waves lapped in and out, surprising us with their unpredictability and intensity, I felt something inside of me unclench. It hadn't been the easiest day, but more tranquil days would follow. We walked down the beach, passing the Disney resort and several other posh hotels. I wanted one of the strangers we met to ask us where we were staying so I could reply:
"We live here!"
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