Snakes and snails and jellyfish tales

My son Nick and I went to Fort Clinch State Park on Tuesday, joining other home schoolers for a day at the beach. It rained most of the trip up there (Fort Clinch is an hour north of our house, just outside of Fernandina). Nick was driving, which gave him lots of opportunities to practice not hydroplaning and also gave me the chance to practice not putting my feet through the floorboards in a pointless effort to get him to slow down. We outran the storms and got to the beach in time to meet everyone in the group leaving the beach to go to the other side of the park. Apparently the winds were so strong that no one could swim and they were all getting sand blasted. 

When the thunder and lightning finally stopped, we all drove back to the beach and the kids jumped in the water again, until someone noticed that there were large fish jumping around just offshore. This could mean that the fish were very happy about the storm being over or that something bigger was chasing them so we called all the kids back out of the water again, just to be safe.

After an hour or so, all the big fish having swum away or been eaten, the kids ventured back into the water to play in the waves for a while. Then, just as we were about to pack everything up and head for the nearest pizza place, Nick was stung on the leg by a jellyfish. 

He flew out of the water, and was immediately inundated with advice, all of it strangely similar. "Pee on it!" "Pee on it!" "Pee on it!" While he limped off to the restroom, I gathered up our stuff and tried very hard not to think about the logistics of peeing on your own leg. I also tried to remember where the nearest grocery store was along our route. Did you know that vinegar will take away a lot of the sting? So will urine, which is handier, but of which there is generally a limited amount available.

We ended up stopping at Wal-mart. I had to go in wearing only my bathing suit and a straw hat, but personal embarrassment is not even on the same scale as a jellyfish sting. 

I bought some barbecue chips to cheer Nick up along with the vinegar and also a container of Accent, which is pure monosodium glutamate. Chris, who lived on a boat in the Caribbean for twenty years and so should know, told me to make a paste from it and smear it on the sting on Nick's leg, then wrap it and leave it alone for two hours. Then she said to take a credit card and scrape off the paste, going against the grain of the hair on his leg to remove any lingering stings. 

Nick talked about his injury all the way home (an hour, remember?). "This isn't at all like what you see in cartoons," he said. "In cartoons, they make it seem as though it's like being shocked. Remember in 'Finding Nemo' and they go through the jellyfish and every time a jellyfish touches them you hear a fizzing noise, like an electric shock? It's nothing at all like that. It's more like stinging nettles. It feels like someone hit me in the leg with stinging nettles."

It's one of the things that worried Nick when we first moved to Florida, being stung by jellyfish or eaten by sharks. Well, now he knows what a jellyfish sting feels like and he's proud of himself for living through it. I don't even want to think about the other.

Nick is hoping for scars. "I'll show it to some little kid and tell him, 'Yep, that's where I got stung by a jellyfish.'"

I'll be sporting scars of my own from this experience. Fortunately, they're all on the inside. I'm already making plans to pack vinegar and Accent in the beach bag, right next to the lightning rods and shark repellant.

BEACH NIGHT

"Under no circumstances are we cancelling tonight."
"Okay."
"If there's a tornado, maybe, but anything else, we're still on,
all right?"
"Right. (Tornado, maybe?)"

I'm on the phone with my friend, talking about our beach night
tonight. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, we drive to
Mickler's Landing, a public beach south of Jacksonville. We bring
folding chairs, blankets when it's cold, thermoses of herbal tea and
something we've written to read aloud. We've tossed around a few
names for our group, including the Full Moon Women's Writing Circle,
the Moon Maidens and the Loonies, but nothing has really stuck. It's
the getting together that counts.

Earlier this month we had to cancel our plans because a newcomer to
our group had a previous commitment. My friend and I have
decided we're going to meet up anyway, just the two of us. "I really
need this," she says, and I realize that I do as well.

When I moved to Jacksonville from Ludington I left more than a house
behind, but it took me a while to sort out what else was missing.
Some things were obvious, like dentists and produce markets and
trails through the woods. Some things took a little longer to
identify, like where to drink coffee while writing in the morning,
the best place to sit while talking on the phone and faces you know
and who know you back.

When we arrrive at the beach we walk to a flat spot, then arrange our
chairs and take turns reading what we've written. This month's topic
is "The path not taken." My friend decided in the middle of writing
her essay that it was actually about parts of herself that she'd
failed to nurture. My piece turned out to be about learning to love
the life you've got instead of the one you wish you had.

After reading we walk up and down along the water, carrying our
sandals, looking for shells. I recently borrowed a book from the
library about decorating with sea shells and so I'm gathering
materials for a project. I don't know what I'll make, only that
I'll need lots of shells to make it with. We pick up orange, brown, blue,
striped, smooth and ridged shells and put them, whole and fragmented,
into a bucket.

Back in Michigan the only shells I've ever found are zebra mussels
and snails. When I was a teenager I would collect lucky stones, small
fossilized plant segments with a hole through the middle. I got to be
pretty good at seeing them among all the other stones on the beach.
I'd like to develop that skill down here to spot shark teeth. I tell
my friend that I won't feel like I've really settled here until I
find one for myself. I've been studying them in the stores so I can
see the shape in my mind. She says she's been here twelve years and
hasn't found a single one.

In Ludington, past First Curve, the beach is lined with dunes. On
this beach in Jacksonville as far as we can see in either direction
there are lines of mansions staring out to sea. We talk about what it
would be like to live in one. "Maybe it would be like living in a
magazine photo shoot," she says. "Too clean and perfect, like nobody
lives there." I think about my own house, evidence of life scattered
over every surface -- dishes, clothes, books, receipts, loose change,
and lately, shells.

Most of these houses seem empty, with long rows of dark windows. My
friend says she and her husband decided a long time ago it wouldn't
be worth it to live in one of them. "You'd have to evacuate for every
hurricane," she says. "And you have to replace the light fixtures all
the time because they corrode in the salt air so quickly." She adds,
"I wouldn't mind walking through one, though, just to see what it was
like."

I think that if I had a house on the water I'd never leave it. But
I've never lived on an ocean. Maybe, when the sea rose up and crashed
against the shore I wouldn't want to stick around to see what
happened next. It's not something I'm likely to experience anyway.
Shoreline property is even more expensive down here in Florida than
it is back in Michigan and, by the looks of these places, once you
have the land, you're required to build a castle on it.

My friend and I return to our chairs and then talk until nearly
midnight. We speculate about whether the lights floating slowly by on
the horizon are a barge or a cruise ship. Occasionally a helicopter
flies past, hugging the shoreline, probably from Mayport, a naval
base just north of us. We wave but they don't wave back. I tell her
about my chopstick diet and she tells me about her daughter's dream
to fly an airplane. Eventually we stop talking and just lean back in
our chairs and look at the stars. I think about how the Big Dipper I
see here is the same one I see when I'm in Ludington. When the
mosquitos come out we pack up to go home.

As I drop my friend off at her house I ask her what next month's
writing topic is. "Moments of joy," she says. Piece of cake, I think.
I'll start with tonight and go from there.