GROWING UP IN FLORIDA

Maybe it's my parents, or going to Sunday school that instills in me a great urgency to never use the words, "I can't."

I grow up in the 40's and 50's in sunny Ft. Lauderdale, going barefoot most of my early years except for school and church. Every day from the age of 10, I am either on the tennis court or at the beach. I can still smell the ocean and feel the sand beneath my toes ... the burnt smell of my skin from too much sun.

We kids walk or ride our bikes everywhere. We don't lock our doors either ... how would our friends get in? No one in my family has ever owned an umbrella. If it rains we just run through it and get wet.

Nasty, annoying mosquitoes are rampant. In the summer, the highlight of every evening at twilight is the spray truck that rides through the neighborhood dispersing DDT to kill the mosquitoes. All the kids jump up, run out of the house into the dense fog of DDT as if it is some magic cloud.

My Dad, a tall, handsome, Georgia boy, owns an awning and canvas company, located in a building facing New River, maybe 50 steps from the bridge on Andrews Avenue. He is a humble man, of few words, unencumbered by a high sense of ego, who provides modestly for our family of five. I have one brother and one sister. My Dad not only sews awnings but is also a master craftsman, or so he says, for making beautiful sails for huge, expensive yachts.

One of his more memorable customers is the movie star, Errol Flynn. "After I finished loading his sails aboard his yacht, Flynn insisted that I come sailing with him so I can see my sails billowing in the wind. I had to tell him what I tell all my customers: Can't do it. I get seasick," he says to the family at the dinner table.

My mother, tall and apple shaped, works all day with her household duties. I don't know of any women my mother's age who work outside the home. My mother rules the roost and is the voice of the family. She is also a strict disciplinarian who makes us pick our own switches from the yard when the need arises.

"You can do anything you set your heart to do ... you have intelligence ... use it." She also refuses to allow us to complain. "Complaint is poverty ... and we are not poor."

My mother has crippling, painful, rheumatoid arthritis that's left her hands and feet badly deformed. Still, she does all the work that is required of women of her day — cleaning, washing, ironing and cooking everything from scratch — while the children take over clean up duties in the kitchen following our meals. Those crooked hands sew and mend my clothes, and darn the holes in my Dad's socks.

She doesn't enable her deformity to give her permission to neglect us. Having grown up seeing her with badly malformed fingers and feet, I don't realize they're different from any other mother's hands until late in the sixth grade when Mary Lou Cunningham asks me what is wrong with my mother's hands. Then, the wonder of all she accomplishes hits me and I am amazed at my mother, in awe of her perseverance and determination. She is an inspiration. Because if she can accomplish so much and never complains, imagine what I can do with healthy hands and feet.

Mama takes to bed most days in the afternoons. Later, the arthritis develops in her knees and she is unable to walk except within the house. She misses all my school events: never sees me play tennis, or even graduate. Finding shoes that don't cause additional pain is also difficult. By junior high school I realize that my mother is in too much pain to care for another infant.

One day, Dad brings Mom home from a "doctor's visit" and I see blood running down her legs. She stays in bed for weeks, running a fever, my Dad looking after her. Our house is small, just two bedrooms, it's easy to hear my Dad talking to my Mom through the thin partitions. He is trying to sooth her tears as she tells him "I'm so sorry. I would have liked to have another child but I just can't do it. My fingers can't even open a safety pin. Please forgive me."

"Don't you bother asking forgiveness from me. I see your pain, and I feel it too. I know how painful every step is for you. I'm just sorry I couldn't afford to send you to a real doctor to have this done," he says holding her crippled hands in his. Later, Dad brings all the kids together in our small living room.

"Your Mom's real sick, kids, so I'll need you girls to take good care of her while I go to work," says Dad, as he directs his speech to me and my sister, Zola, since my younger brother is only in the first grade. "She's not going to be able to cook or wash your clothes so you've got to help out. You've got to fend for yourselves."

We make sandwiches for everyone for several days until my Dad can't take it anymore and appeals for help from my Mom's brother and his wife, Charles and Ethel. When they arrive we are treated to real food again, country fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy and fresh vegetables, and clean sheets.

Another doctor is called to the house. I overhear him tell my Dad, "It doesn't look good. She's got a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. I can't put her in the hospital — she'll be arrested for having an illegal abortion. You'll just have to wait it out. That guy that performed this probably didn't use sterile instruments. Rich couples have access to good doctors that will perform this procedure if the money is right, so I understand your situation. I'll leave her some medicine. Good luck."

I realize the seriousness of my Mom's malady when she is unable to get up in the mornings to fix our breakfast. When questioned, she just asks us to pray for her. And we do. It takes several weeks but each day she rallies a little more until finally one morning she gets up, dresses and fixes breakfast for everyone.

My mother has only five spices in her kitchen: salt, pepper, mustard, ketchup, and Tabasco. Every Sunday we are treated to fried chicken, pole beans, mashed potatoes and her wonderful pies; lemon, chocolate meringue, or key-lime ... and on special occasions Charlotte Russe, which has to be served in the footed cut-glass bowl that my grandmother has brought from Alabama.

In our backyard are avocado, mango and kumquat trees. My mother's idea of a salad is a sliced avocado with lemon juice on it. Her only other salad is a tomato, iceberg lettuce, onion and mayonnaise mixture, with lots of salt and pepper.

During the heat and humidity of the summers, right after dinner, we are loaded into the car and taken to the beach where we play in...