A Florida Winter With Dad

Blog # 12

My widowed father turned 80 on December 3, 2020, and nine days later flew to southeast Florida to ride out the winter with me in my new home. The coronavirus crisis had jettisoned his plans for a big family birthday celebration at his Chicago-area home. The COVID pandemic was also messing with his psyche, as he struggled to be happy living alone in quarantine in his condo. As the cold months closed in on him, and his opportunities to dine and socialize outside were waning, he agreed to the plan to spend the winter with me in Boynton Beach, FL.

I got a COVID test done in the week before Dad’s arrival, and it was thankfully negative. My plan was to stay out of grocery stores and other indoor establishments while he was with me, as he had a history of heart disease and was very worried about contracting COVID. He told me he would like to get tested as soon as he arrived in Florida, so I made an appointment for him at the same urgent care clinic that did my test, MD Now in Delray Beach, and we headed there right after I picked him up from the Fort Lauderdale airport on December 12.

Once we arrived at my home that afternoon, I had him pose for a picture in front of the house before going in, so I could send it to my sisters and stepbrothers and let everybody know: Dad had finally made it there!

Inside, I gave him a tour of the house, including his bedroom and bathroom, the windowed breakfast nook where he could put his laptop and other desk-type things, and the kitchen counter that I had set up as a makeshift bar with all his martini fixings, including new martini glasses with palm tree designs. Every night, without fail, he has a martini before bed, and I wanted to have everything there to his liking; my sister Becky had told me what gin and vermouth to buy.

Next to the guestroom where he’d be sleeping, I showed him the den, with a widescreen TV on the wall to watch all his nighttime favorites — “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and, on Friday nights, “Real Time with Bill Maher.” And then I took him to the best room of the house, the lanai, basically a screened patio surrounded by colorful foliage on the outside, where he could relax and enjoy his coffee every morning.

I had been preparing for weeks for my new housemate and had looked forward to his arrival. We hadn’t lived together in decades, but Dad was easygoing and neat, we had successfully traveled together in 2019 in the year after my separation, and I figured we could both use the company during this raging pandemic.

While my COVID test results had taken three days to arrive, Dad’s inexplicably took twice as long, and we eventually had to call the clinic to find out what had happened to his results. He was so nervous until he got the news. Once we learned that his test was negative, we both were able to sigh a breath of relief. It was time to spend the winter days together in sunshine and warmth.

Dad had packed his new bathing suit in his suitcase, and he’d hoped to go to the resort-style swimming pool in my gated 55+ community (where everybody looked more like him at 80 than me at 57!). But unfortunately, and despite my writing a letter to petition the HOA board, he was not allowed to access the pool or any of the recreational amenities that remained open to residents, including the walking path that I had hoped to show him. He was not a permanent resident at Tuscany Bay, not even counting as a “snowbird,” as the wintertime homeowners are called. I wanted to take him to the shaded pathway that went around our recreational area, so he could go on the walks his cardiologist recommended. But you have to cross a bridge that goes over a canal to access that area, and the gate on the bridge was locked at all hours except for weekday mornings for tennis and pickleball. Only residents were currently allowed in. It was disappointing that my father couldn’t enjoy the community amenities, but we understood they were trying to keep the residents in this community safe from the virus. The rules were the rules.

So Dad and I found other things to do together. The ocean is less than 15 minutes away, so we started going to the beach when it wasn’t too cold and windy for him. I brought him along on outings to the local dog park with my little Pomeranian, Lex, and we would stake out a bench for Dad to sit on and watch all the dogs running around. He always wore his mask there, and he’d bristle if anyone unmasked came near him. We figured out strategies to keep him safe. I also introduced Dad to some of the friends I had made in the area, and we did dinner outside at waterfront restaurants with some of them, where we wore masks as much as possible. It was a relief to him how much we could dine outdoors in Florida as we explored different restaurants around the area, going back to favorite ones more than once, including Windy City, which served Chicago-style pizza and Italian beef.

Another great benefit of the area is all the wetlands and nature parks in my county, where Dad and I had plenty of opportunities for bird watching and alligator and turtle sightings. He took lots of photos on his phone and sent pictures to family members who were eager to see how he was doing in his new Florida life. He also sent them photos of the egrets and other birds that flocked all over the grass and ponds right near my villa home.

After Dad had been with me for a couple weeks, the extended family commented on how much more energetic and happier he was looking on our weekly Zoom calls. When he had been back home at his computer in the study of his Oak Park, IL, condo, he had seemed despondent and depressed, and he didn’t talk much over Zoom. Now my sisters were seeing a notable difference, and everybody was glad that his hunkering down in Florida seemed a perfect solution to escape the cold Chicago winter during a terrible pandemic.

To stay out of the stores, Dad and I started a weekly habit of ordering food and other things from Target. We’d sit side by side at my computer with our grocery list and I’d click away on the keyboard, selecting each item from our list, then adding other things we’d think of as we surfed the store site together. Near the beginning of his stay, we ordered a small charcoal grill and accessories so that he could contribute to dinner making by grilling steaks, lamb chops, burgers, and sausage (he does have a strong liking for red meat, I soon learned). When the completed order was ready to be picked up an hour or two later, the Target app on my phone notified me and I headed out. It was nice I didn’t have to leave the car to get supplies during the pandemic with Dad.

Because I was often working from home and Dad was sitting around all day doing crossword puzzles and playing Hearts on his laptop or phone, he was happy to escape the house with me for the order pickup, even for the short drive to Target, where they brought the bags to our car and placed them in the trunk. We also went regularly to the ABC liquor store so he could stock up on his gin and boxed wine, or we’d do a trip to Walgreen’s for one of his transferred prescriptions or something else he might need (compression stockings for his legs, a heating pad for his back pain).

Most nights Dad would ask what we had planned for the next day or two, so he could put it on his little calendar and look forward to driving around town for even a mundane errand. He also enjoyed being in charge of picking up the mail and would take the key and walk over to the bank of mailboxes down the street, where he also had had his mail forwarded. Fetching the mail became his daily responsibility while staying with me, and it was good for him to get outside and walk a little. He told me that when he had been watching the news back home and a newscaster would discuss the telltale signs of pandemic depression, he recognized several of those signs in himself. Now he wasn’t depressed anymore. He no longer was sitting alone in his home for hours on end.

Dad and I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s together, planning special dinners for both holidays to enjoy out on my lanai; he cooked meat on the new grill and I prepared side dishes. We took a drive on Christmas Eve to go look at a 100-foot Christmas tree in Delray Beach and some neighborhood light displays; we opened gifts and stockings on Christmas morning before happily Zooming with family members like my kids; and on New Year’s Eve I got Prosecco and snacks for our night of watching the Times Square coverage on my den TV. It wasn’t exciting times, but it was nice. We were together in our little bubble, staying safe and COVID free.

Notable events were happening outside our bubble, though, and an important election was nearing: the Senate runoff races in Georgia. We wanted to support Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in their battle against the incumbent Republicans. Like me, Dad is a left-leaning Democrat, and we both were dying for Mitch McConnell to lose his position as Senate majority leader and his hold on power in this country. We wanted President-Elect Biden to be able to get things done when he entered the White House. So the upcoming January 5 election in Georgia was extremely important to both of us.

Soon after Dad had arrived at my house, I had pulled out stacks of postcards I’d agreed to handwrite for a civic justice organization in Georgia. They were personalized postcards to be sent to the homes of Democratic voters in Georgia reminding them about the special election coming up. Dad offered to help me write the postcards, so in the ensuing weeks, while we watched MSNBC and CNN and followed the latest in political news and current events, we worked on the cards on a little table in front of my couch. I never expected to be doing grassroots advocacy work with my father! And he had never filled out postcards for a political cause. But he was happy to be involved in whatever way he could.

Dad was about to help the cause in a quite different way: watching my dog and holding down the fort in Florida so I could fly to Atlanta and meet my 21-year-old son Lucas for a few days of Ossoff-Warnock canvassing on the streets of Georgia and then setting Lucas up to be a Democratic poll watcher (detailed in a different blog article). Dad’s contributions to helping with this Senate campaign would now continue in January, by helping me with Lex so I’d be freed up to leave town and get involved in the volunteer work needed. Dad had not taken care of a dog for a very long time, since our family collie had passed away when I was in college. So of course he had a lot of questions and concerns. Not to worry, I would type up all the info for him!

On the morning of January 3, 2021, I left my dog and my house, along with a printout of full detailed care instructions, in the hands of my father, who would stay in touch with me through our cell phones (fortunately he was getting better with texting!). I drove myself to the airport and then covered up with a KN95 mask, which Dad had bought in a multipack for Lucas and me to use in our travels.

We had a productive three days in Georgia. On the day of my return—January 6th!—as I was in the air coming home, unbeknownst to me, insurrection was happening at the U.S. Capitol. I landed in Fort Lauderdale in the late afternoon and as soon as I turned on my cell phone as we taxied to the gate, I looked for news of whether the votes had come in for Jon Ossoff. I already knew that Raphael Warnock had won his Senate seat. I was excitedly anticipating a victory for Ossoff as well, because we needed both wins and I knew he was in the lead when the votes were still being counted as I had left Georgia.

But before I could celebrate the great news of the two Democratic wins in Georgia, I got the shockingly bad national news. It was all over my phone. I had news bulletins and texts from family and friends: There was a crazy, violent riot going on at our national’s capitol. The celebration of our Georgia victory would sadly have to wait.

I picked up my car from the airport’s long-term parking and listened to NPR news on the radio for the whole 40-minute drive home. I checked in with Dad, who was preparing sausage on the grill for my arrival dinner; he was following the news coverage in real time on the TV. I was in shock as I drove through the humid streets of Florida. I listened to Congress people describe their terrifying day’s events to reporters on the radio. It was so unreal. I had known something might happen that day at the Capitol, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. My happy news from my trip with Lucas was now overshadowed by the mayhem in D.C.

Before I got home, while stopped at a red light, I texted Lucas to see if he had arrived okay at Reagan National Airport, where he had been flying back from Georgia around the same time as me. As luck would have it, he had to fly right into the eye of the proverbial storm — to Washington, DC. He had told me earlier in the day that his dad couldn’t pick him up from the airport because of work, so he would have to take the Metrorail home from Reagan. While connecting on the Orange line in route to Virginia’s Vienna Metro station, he ran smack-dab into an unpleasant surprise: He texted me that there were “Proud Boys” types in his train car who were coming back from the Capitol, and they were hooping and hollering and making a scene.

Holy crap!! That was about the worst scenario possible after returning home from a Democratic victory in Georgia. Lucas tried to swallow his fear and attempted to sink down in his seat from their sight. He was sure that they would see “liberal” written all over him, from his longish hair to his choice of clothes to his pinkish-colored shoes. Fortunately he was not wearing any of his Ossoff-Warnock or other Democratic signage on the trip home. That would not go over well with those loudmouth insurrectionists itching for a fight.

He texted me later that the MAGA gangsters from the Capitol had eventually exited his car and disappeared before he arrived at his station, so thankfully he got home safe after an exhausting but exhilarating few days of travel. And I drove home to Dad, dinner, and a long night of TV news….

But, first, I had a new problem to work around. I had just spent more than 3 days in Georgia, where mask wearing appeared to be optional and COVID seemed to be raging. I had to protect my father from anything I may have picked up.

We had talked about it before I had left for the trip, and it was decided that we would stay at opposite ends of my house when I returned, until I got the results back from another COVID test, which would have to wait at least 4 days to ensure that I wouldn’t get a false negative. The last thing I wanted to do was to get Dad sick because I had gone out of state.

So until I got a negative COVID test result, I would keep away from Dad unless we were both wearing our KN95 masks, or we would eat outside. For my first night back, Dad set up dinner on the counter between my kitchen and dining areas, and we got our food separately and ate at different tables in different rooms, but we talked loudly back and forth about the day’s news. After dinner, we went to separate rooms to watch the TV coverage of the Capitol riots and the Georgia Senate results. It was a huge news day, but we couldn’t sit together to watch it.

For the next week, I did not prepare any meals for us, so that I could make sure not to pass on any germs to Dad. He attempted to cook what he could (as he specializes only in grilling), and we did a lot of pot pies, pizzas, and takeout. After I got my COVID test result back, and it was thankfully negative, we were able to go back to our usual routines, including eating meals at the same table and watching TV together on the den couch.

Once the Georgia trip was behind me, I could turn my focus to trying to get Dad the COVID vaccine. It was now being offered in Florida to those 65 and over. So I began to go through all the avenues to try to get him an appointment: sending an email to the Palm Beach County health department, filling out an online form for him, and calling a designated number for more information. Nothing worked for several days, and my efforts went nowhere. I even tried signing him up in a couple other counties in Florida. Nobody responded to me or to him. But on January 19, as I was taking a break from work and sitting on the couch with him, my phone buzzed — a local friend was texting me that a particular vaccination appointment line was now live, with representatives answering calls and making appointments for senior citizens for vaccination sites in Miami-Dade.

I whooped in excitement and quickly told Dad about the text I’d just received as I called the phone number I was given. Sure enough, a woman answered the phone and asked me a bunch of questions (Dad’s birthdate, etc.), including when we could make it down to the Marlins stadium in Miami for the appointment. This was a Tuesday, and she offered appointments for Wednesday through Saturday of that week. I had work things scheduled for Thursday and Friday, and I didn’t want to wait until the weekend, so we picked the very next day, Wednesday, January 20. Yes, it would be on Biden’s Inauguration Day.

Dad and I had planned to spend that day watching the TV coverage, celebrating, and having homemade chili from my crockpot. Now, though, we would be driving to Miami for a 2:45 p.m. vaccination appointment, which was the latest time slot they had that day. I knew it would be at least an hour’s drive from my house. We decided to listen to the inauguration events on NPR during the car ride down, and we’d head out early so we could have a Cuban lunch in Little Havana, which was right near the stadium vaccination site.

On Inauguration Day, I prepared chili in the crockpot in the morning, turned it on low to slowly simmer for the day, then walked Lex before leaving him for several hours. We drove to Miami and had a delicious lunch in the courtyard of a Little Havana restaurant, followed by more news from D.C. on the radio as we headed over to the stadium (which is when I learned that the Marlins are a major league baseball team).

Before we could even get to Marlins Park, we discovered a stream of cars slowly snaking through the streets of the nearby neighborhood, and we realized that was the tail end of the vaccination line. We pulled up to the end of it at 2:15 p.m., a half-hour before Dad’s scheduled appointment. Throughout the afternoon, we inched forward every so often, edging through the inner-city streets before eventually being directed into the stadium parking lot area. There we were placed into three lines, which funneled to two lines before going in opposite directions at the stadium site. We spotted port-a-potties next to the stadium, and Dad and I took turns leaving the car to go relieve ourselves (a big yuck!). Occasionally we’d see vaccination staffers coming to cars and checking for people’s paperwork. They marked the front windshield with some kind of glass marker and tucked Dad’s paperwork behind the windshield wiper.

After a full five hours of us sitting in my car, and watching the sun disappear as we waited and waited, we finally got to the vaccination tent for the inoculation. We were tired and frustrated. I worried about my dog needing to get outside, and about the crockpot of chili sitting on my kitchen counter all day. I couldn’t believe how long the wait had turned out to be, and that was with a scheduled appointment!

My frown soon turned upside down, though. A staffer walked up to my car and, through his mask, asked if I would like a vaccination too. Through my own mask, I said, “But I’m not 65.” He replied that that was okay and handed me a form to quickly fill out.

So apparently it paid off, waiting there until the end of the day! There were some extra vaccine doses that would have been left over that night, and they’d have gone to waste. So I was one of the lucky ones who unexpectedly got to be vaccinated. As I pulled forward in the drive-through tent, one nurse came to the driver’s side and injected me with the Pfizer shot, and another came to the passenger side and took care of Dad. Finally — needles in arms. I barely felt it.

We received our little vaccination cards and waited at the site for 20 more minutes to make sure there was no adverse reaction. Then I rushed us back home to Lex, our chili dinner, and the inauguration highlights on TV.

We returned to Miami three weeks later for our second Pfizer injection, again with scheduled appointments, and guess what — we waited again in our car for hours. This time it took even longer, just over five hours. We thought the first time had to be an anomaly, but no, it still was hours on end before we got our shots. We made sure to have everything we needed in the car while waiting, including a full tank of gas.

This visit to Miami on February 10 was a little different, though: It was the start of what I was calling a “vaccination vacation.” Dad and I had initially talked about driving to the Florida Keys for a little vacation, and because Miami is right on the way from Palm Beach County to the Keys, we decided to tack on a three-night stay at that sunny, tropical destination after our second shots. We had both been to Key West only for a few hours while disembarking from separate cruise ships many moons ago. This time, we would drive over all the bridges and beautiful aquamarine waterways in the scenic road route to reach Key West.

After our second vaccination, because we didn’t know how bad our reactions and side effects might be (and we had heard it was usually worse after the second dose), we stayed at a hotel on Key Largo, the closest Key from Miami. That way, if I didn’t feel well that night, my driving would be much shorter. But other than a sore arm, I had no ill effects. Dad didn’t think he did either, although looking back later, he felt he may have been more fatigued that week than usual (he seemed the same to me).

We enjoyed three nights and four days at the Keys, with beautiful (warm but breezy) weather, delicious seaside meals, and fun people watching and touring. We loved all the tiki bars along the Keys. Mask wearing was mandatory everywhere we went, so that checked a box for Dad. A highlight for him, being from Oak Park, IL, the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, was touring Hemingway House at the tip of Key West. A highlight for me was going to the very end of Route 1 (a road that I have lived near, both in Virginia and Florida) and to the southernmost point of the United States. And as a guide told us on one of our trolley tours, we were closer in Key West to Havana, Cuba, than we were to a Wal-Mart. That was a pretty cool fact.

I also loved the big tree-lined streets, lush foliage, and funky architecture and sights of Key West. And the roosters who strutted all around town unhindered — definitely unique.

Dad was not able to walk much, as per usual, so I left him on a bench a few times and did some walking through Old Town by myself. I looked forward to returning with my kids and showing them this fun place; I knew I could enjoy some of the sights and amenities a bit more with them.

But I’m glad that, at age 80, Dad was able to do this trip with me. We were both now fully inoculated against the coronavirus, which was a big relief, and we had had a great vacation together. He would be leaving my home and returning to Chicago the next month, but I would always have these memories with him.

Our last day in Key West, we watched the sun set over the ocean at the famous Mallory Square, took lots of photos, and relished the experience.

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