Home in Florida (back then and now)

Now in the middle of spending ten months in central Florida, I’m remembering my 12-14 years here back then (1979-1993).  My heart melts when I remember the sweet bungalow that Lisa and I called home 1981-93 on a tree-draped dead-end street, a two-mile bike ride to Rollins.  It was love at first sight.  It looked like Home! And it was.  Lisa went through high school and college living there.  Boys picked her up for dates and prom on that front porch even though I stood, arms crossed, grimly smiling, growling protectively like a mama panther warning them to keep their distance.

            Friends and strangers called our Winter Park home cozy and comfortable, meaning small.  It was all the space we needed (and could afford) then—two bedrooms, one bath, a dining room large enough for six to cluster around our claw-foot round oak table for family feasts, and a long living room with a wood-burning fireplace where we took off our shoes and put our feet up, held celebrations, hosted meetings and parties.  In that big room when I was Prez of Orlando NOW (1981-83 I think) we desperately plotted strategies for ratification of the ERA in FL as time ran out.  After we lost that, we shared our lives in CR sessions in our home on violence against women.

I often took my morning coffee and my last-minute class prep out to the glider on the screened front porch.  Sometimes I graded papers on the screened back porch while the washer/dryer chugged out clean clothes.  Friends gathered in our narrow un-renovated kitchen between the dining room and back porch to chop veggies and gossip.  It was on that kitchen wall phone with its coiled cord that I received my first call from Barbara Grier telling me that Naiad would publish “Convent Lesbian Stories,” that Nancy Manahan and must edit—a command.

When Lisa’s friend Lisa moved in with us in 1983 or 84, I moved to the back yard.  A friend with carpenter skills converted the garage into a studio apt that I called my “tree house” protected by tall oaks.  I stretched a long piece of plywood across two two-drawer filing cabinets and called it a desk.  A long clothes poll hung in the far left corner as a closet.  I spent most of my time in a comfy wicker chair with reading lamp on the right side reading, preparing for class, and writing in my journal.  I had a small bathroom with shower and a kitchen of sorts with sink, tiny frig, and a two-burner hotplate.  I slept on a futon in the loft which I climbed up to on a steep narrow ladder.

Friends had two responses to my tree house: “I love it. I want it!” Or “What are you doing living in the back yard when you have a house?”  I did join the Lisa’s for dinner.  But I loved my private retreat far from top 40 pop music and teen chatter.  It felt like a nun’s cell and reminded me of my first room of my own in the Pender Hotel in Nebraska in 1965.  I imagined I was still living the spirit of the vow of poverty with the wise words of St Augustine that I still believe: “It is better to need less than to have more.”