Searching for Shell City

This two-part blog takes place in December, 2021.

I’m back in Florida after 15 years, greeted by warmth and waves of memories. The sound of the ocean, the sun on my face, and pelicans soaring overhead in graceful unison put me at peace with the world even though Covid rages everywhere. But all is well on this quiet barrier island with its expansive dunes filled with grasses, sea grape, saw palmetto, cabbage palms and long, walkable beaches.

Our decision to spend December 2021 in Florida was made on a whim. With Maine’s cold winter around the corner, we thought why not spend a month in the sun? Equally serendipitous and unexpected was finding a place on Hutchinson Island where my parents owned a condo for 30 years that I visited many times. The trip south seemed meant to be.

The island is 23 miles long. One side is the Atlantic Ocean, the other the Indian River. Most of the development, the large condominiums and residences, are located in the center, along with small shopping plazas. There are two bridges into the mainland, one that goes into the town of Stuart and the other, closer to us, to Jensen Beach. Both used to be drawbridges and there were many times my father would get stuck on the mainland side, the car full of groceries and fish. The wait could take up to an hour; there was always a race to get across and back in time.

Our rental unit is in a building at the furthest point north on the island. There are two smaller condominium buildings next to us on the south side but the north side is protected public land with no development. Our location seems very private and remote, even though the towering pink and white condominiums, with crazy names like The Empress, The Princess, and every imaginable play on the words Sea, Wind, Sand, and Dune, are right down the road, along with the Oceana, where my parents lived. Their place is a three-mile walk on the beach from ours but feels like a just a heartbeat away. Standing on our balcony, the familiarity makes time disappear. At any moment I expect to see my mother on the beach, waving to me, her white hair blowing in all directions, carrying a bucket full of seashells. Later in the day, she’ll put on one of her flowing Turkish caftans, add colorful costume jewelry, comb her hair, apply lipstick, and be ready for cocktails. But that is wishful thinking.

My parents purchased their condo, a corner unit, in 1979. I think they came upon the opportunity from a Sun Oil advertisement sent to stockholders. I remember my father flew down by himself to check out the property. It’s location, right on the beach, was perfect as their hearts had been set on living by the sea from the time of their marriage. They named the condo Tarabya, after the small seaside town they had visited on my mother’s first trip to Turkey in September, 1952. They fell in love with the charming harbor, the colorful villas tucked away in the hillsides. They dreamed of owning one of their own, with a sailboat docked below, and a life filled with adventure and world travel. Little did they know their dreams would come true, their lives forever changed. Mine too.

I can’t imagine them being alive now and dealing with the pandemic, how it would have restricted travel and visits to family in Istanbul, not to mention the annual trek to Florida. Knowing my father, he would have scoffed at the restrictions, ignoring them and doing and going where he damn well pleased. After getting vaccinated, of course, at the hospital before anyone else was getting them. He was always a great finagler, like Houdini and General Patton fused together.

From the beginning of their life in Florida in the late 1970s, to the end in 2009, they always traveled by car. First a large Cadillac Seville, and later a two-door Pontiac, easier for him to drive but harder for my mother to get in and out of. They took their time on the road, making the 1,100 mile trip in three days. They’d leave Hershey’s Mill sometime after Christmas and stay until August nearly every year for 30 years. He was still driving at 85. This was concerning enough; let alone he could only see with one eye. But my mother ignored my protests, reminding me their good friend Eric V. wore an eye patch and worked for the CIA. Her health at 82 was deteriorating rapidly. She had problems walking and breathing but they refused to fly or take an easier way that would have put less stress on both of them. Sadly in 2009, on the trip back north, he fell in a parking lot, suffering injuries from which he never fully recovered. He died of renal failure the following year and my mother passed not long after, in 2011. I never got to say good-bye to either one of them. So I am in Florida, looking for them, hoping they’ll send me a sign that they are here.

We have driven past their building many times since arriving here but have not stopped or sought entrance through the gates (everything here is gated). My mission is to walk to Oceana. I want to make a slow approach, by beach, passing all the familiar landmarks, as if I never left.

The day is cloudless and, temperature wise, perfect. Each step draws me into recognizable territory, but after three miles blisters have started forming on the bottom of my bare feet from the rough sand. I start to question the practicality of my endeavor but I continue, undaunted, ignoring my sore feet and my heart, beating harder and faster. I wish I had brought water because by the time I get there, I can barely swallow.

In front of their building is a covered walkway that leads from the beach to the pool and clubhouse. I take the wooden stairs and stand on the boardwalk beneath the thatched roof. Their building is to my left and the pool is directly in front of me, at the end of the walk. Nothing looks the same. Yes, the building footprint is the same, but the balconies on all the units are painted a cool, mint green, not tan. A heavy black iron gate now surrounds the pool instead of paths and landscaping. On the walkway I don’t find the Tar Station where Granny made the boys sit and clean their feet after a day at the beach, like it was the law. The club house and pool, one of two, look the same, but what is unchanged has been overwhelmed by all that has. I stand alone on the wooden walkway, shielding the sun from my eyes, searching the fifth-floor balcony, praying they will magically appear.

I kept asking if they are there with me but get no response. I feel very alone. Sad and regretful for time I missed, for all the what ifs and wish I hads. What if I had insisted they go to a nursing home, what if I had stayed with them at Hershey’s Mill instead of spending so much time at work? Failing to be truly present when they died has left me with a chasm of longing to be with them one last time, here in Florida. To have a glass of wine, cocktails on the balcony, olives, before my father fires up the illegal grill on their balcony. He chooses to ignore the billowing smoke, as if he doesn’t see it, no one else can. I want to sit and tell them about their beautiful grandsons and great grandson, named Hudson after the river we love that flowed through our happy lives in West Point so many years ago.

 I turn around and head back up the beach to our place, disheartened. I get maybe a mile into the three-mile return and stop. I can’t take another step because the bottom of my feet hurt so much and my face feels hot. I call Bill and ask him to please come pick me up which of course he does. I make it to a public beach walkway and wait for him by the road. He doesn’t say a word or ask me questions and I know he understands.

Over the next two weeks I take many more walks on the beach but only go two miles. Sometimes Bill goes with me but he does not like to walk as much as I do. One day we come to a long stretch of seashells, exposed by the low tide and I think it must be a place my mother used to call Shell City. She talked about it as being “way up the beach,” but I never went there during my time with them. She found and collected many fine shells over the years. She made them into bookmarks, a shell glued to each end of a grosgrain ribbon, and used them in her countless cookbooks that now all belong to me.

I keep hoping when I get to Shell City she’ll quietly point one out to me that I missed and maybe that will be my sign. But maybe they are not here on the island, maybe they are sitting on a balcony in Tarabya, overlooking the blue Bosphorus Strait where they always dreamt they would be. I will keep looking for them. My pen is never far from their past or mine.