Florida

I have always wanted to visit the Keys. Especially after mother talked about her first visit there, driving on the longest bridge back to the peninsula in the sunset, with nothing but the endless ocean outside the either side of her car.  With kids now we will undoubtedly be limited to the breaks when school is out. Then there is the contention of visiting the Disney resort in Orlando.  Although Alex is 13 now, out-grown the Disney fancy age but Robin at 5, is just right now for that kind of theme park experience. Andy also has never been to Florida yet. The last time I was there were back in the 89. My parents first took my sister and I there for our first family summer vacation in ’87 as a token American family vacation.  This was the magical place for children as they wrote to us while we were still back in China, waiting to be reunited with them.  I could tell they must have imagined taking us there often, talking among themselves about when we’d finally be together again.Back then, the world seemed so black and white. Every where in America, it represented not only freedom, but beauty, bounty and modernity in absolute contrast to the poverty that was all around, equally abundant for everyone in China. Everything American was good and shiny down to every stick of carrot and the neatly stacked apples in grocery stores. Thinking back I remember how I gawked at the picture of those shiny apples on the picture of my mom with a shopping cart in a grocery store some where in Georgia. “Those look fake, like wax or plastic fruits. How can there be so many perfect, unbruised apples in one shop?” I would comment to my grandma.

Then in ’89 when my grandparents joint us in Atlanta, we all went again. That trip also took us up north into the Smokey mountain of Tennessee, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore… Taking a share of the drive in our brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon, I was a newly licensed driver as a 16-year old. The wagon had 3 row seats with the last row holding 2 rear facing, flip up seats only big enough for kids. They were just right for my sister and me. And there we sat for the entire journey of our vacation up and down the east coast, when I wasn’t driving. We made silly googly faces at drivers in cars behind us along the way.  We could only afford to stay in the cheapest motels along the way and made sandwiches instead of eating at restaurants. But it was pure joy for all of us.

Here is a picture of my mom, my sister and me in front of the Shamu stadium in Sea World Orlando. Oh how we have changed since that moment in time. Would there be demonstration outside Sea World for release of their Orcas? I kind of doubt that would be the case in Florida even if that were the case for San Diego.