Palm Beach, Florida

This story starts with a phone call in 1957.  My Aunt Rita called to tell me that she and my Uncle Jack had moved from New York to Palm Beach, Florida.  She said they were living on Nightingale Trail, and hoped I would come and visit them. 

The next day I drove from my cottage in Berkeley to San Francisco.  I knew there was a big pet shop on Maiden Lane.  I went there and bought a beautiful, colorful, Chinese nightingale.  All the colors of the rainbow!  I made a sketch of him, then a big mosaic-inlaid bowl.  I gave it to my aunt and uncle when I visited them on Nightingale Trail.

Eventually my mother bought a small retirement home next to their house (see picture), which was bought by my Uncle Speed and Aunt Lucile.  Auntie Rita and Uncle Jack moved to a much larger house nearby, facing Lake Worth.  My grandmother used to say, “Keep the family together!”  In retirement, they were together.  They had no interest whatsoever in “high society,” but had a lively social life among themselves, playing Scrabble, going to the club for lunch, celebrating holidays.  At Christmas time we sang carols together, mother played the piano, Charlie the violin.  

We visited “Grandma” in the sweltering summer and at Christmas time.  When they were teenagers, Eva and Jan wanted to go skiing for Christmas, but I insisted on Palm Beach.  I knew my mother had been waiting a long time to see them. 

André and the children were never crazy about Palm Beach, but I loved it.  I loved the balmy climate, the proximity to the ocean, just a few blocks from mother’s house.  I loved the long, white, private beach, practically deserted, and the salty green ocean.  I loved the blue, blue sky with white puffy clouds and the white skyscrapers at the far end of the beach.  I loved the white mansions in Palm Beach, the palm trees, the purple bougainvilleas and red wisterias in Mother’s garden, the giant banyan tree in front.  I loved picking oranges, grapefruits and avocados off the trees in her backyard and eating them right away.  I loved the pool where I went skinny-dipping every night after sundown.  We always had a bowl of ice cream afterwards. 

One of the things I loved most of all in Palm Beach was the famous Breakers Hotel.  (see picture)  It was very famous in the “roaring twenties” when “High Society” from New York and other places came to Palm Beach for Christmas holidays.  It is still the best hotel in town.  When I first arrived in Palm Beach my Uncle Jack offered to give me “the guided tour.”  He said, “You’ll like this, Nancy,” and I did.  I also liked being escorted by my famous uncle, whose radio program was well known to New Yorkers now living in Florida.  I admired and loved him.  I loved the spaciousness of the Breakers Hotel, the old-worldly elegance, the beautifully landscaped grounds, and especially the location overlooking the ocean. 

Many years later, after my Uncle Jack had died, my Aunt had an apartment on Breakers’ Row, where I visited her several times.  We sat on the balcony, overlooking the ocean, sipping Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry before lunch.  We listened to her favorite record, Frank Sinatra singing, “My Way.”  Unfortunately, she ended up in a nursing home where she was very unhappy and finally died. 

Palm Beach was an important place in my life for other reasons as well.  My mother died there on Christmas Eve in 1982.  She was 86 years old.  She survived bone cancer, but suffered from hepatitis acquired from a contaminated blood transfusion.  She also had high blood pressure and a sclerotic heart. She was almost  blind.  She had previously survived a heart attack and stroke.  At the end she was very weak and thin, so unlike her old, vigorous, life-loving self. 

When we knew she was dying I called Eva who was spending her Junior Year abroad in Padua. (She spent her other college years at UC Santa Cruz.)  I told her she had to be in Palm Beach by Friday.  She borrowed money and slept overnight in an airport, but she made it.  My mother counted the little family surrounding her bedside.  “One, two, three, four.” She said to me,  “I, l, l, l, love you!”  Just before she died, from a series of mild strokes, she said that she wanted lemon chiffon pie.  I told her we didn’t have any lemon chiffon pie.  She said indignantly, “No pie? What kind of a ship is this anyway?” But, a week before her death, I overheard her saying to her doctor, (who turned out to be a drug addict, and murderer!) “They are coming for Christmas anyway.  Why should they have to come twice?”  In other words, she decided to die during our visit, to save us the trouble and expense of a second visit!

We arranged a nice little memorial service in the West Palm Beach Unitarian Church, presided over by the minister who had become my mother’s best friend after her husband’s death, Dr. Waldemar Argow.  If she had died in Pittsburgh, more than one hundred people would have attended her memorial service, since she was very well known and greatly admired there.  She planned the whole service beforehand; the music, the poetry, quotations from the Bible.  Her brother Uncle Speed, André, Eva, young Jani and I read the selections.  It was just the way she wanted it to be.  We had a dinner at the Breakers afterwards, for family and close friends.  There were many letters of condolence and bouquets of flowers.  Many said she was a “remarkable woman.”  A few asked me to return gifts which they had sent her.  I didn’t know what to do with all of her belongings.  Eva said, “Send them to California!”  I did that.  In my SF apartment I still have the black mahogany desk at which I did my homework in 9th grade.  Also, the Persian rugs and comfortable blue chair, which all remind me of her. 

Many years later, after all of my Palm Beach family was gone, I was vacationing with friends in Key West.  I decided to stop overnight at the Breakers Hotel to have one last look at Nightingale Trail.  I did that.  I left the veranda doors in my room open all night, to hear the ocean waves crashing on the beach.  I enjoyed the meals in the sumptuous dining room overlooking the ocean.  I even had an expensive hair-styling in the beauty parlor.  The next morning I took a taxi to Nightingale Trail.  Everything looked exactly as I remembered it.  That was my last trip to Florida.