Quincy is here for the week. Now that he is four and a half years old, life is golden. We went to Weeki Wachee State Park to see the mermaids today. Quincy tells me he has never seen any mermaids and he was eager to go. He was dressed and had his sandals on when he appeared for breakfast. He had his special catalog (many pages of Play Mobile stuff) laid out to go.
The last time Andy and I went to Weeki Wachee was at least thirty years ago when our sons were little, way before we had our home here in Dade City. The drive, about forty-five minutes from here is beautiful through the rolling green hills with very little development. The park, now a state park, is unchanged except for a modest water park addition where there are slides down to the sandy beach on the edge of the freezing cold spring. The water has no odor of chlorine, because the water comes from deep in the aquifer.
It is old Florida, funky but nice. There were people there, but nothing like the throngs at our usual theme parks. We took the boat ride down the river and back. Quincy was interested in all the birds and fish we saw in and along the crystal clear water. But the best part was the mermaid show you see from the underwater theater on the edge of the spring. The story line was a loose interpretation of the Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid.
Nothing, to my mind, can top Florida springs for natural beauty, funked up or not. I was up for this! The mermaids appeared and swam so beautifully. The natural creatures of the spring appeared. A couple of turtles swam among the mermaids, and were quite bothersome, pecking at their heads and bellies. The mermaids swatted at them, but they always came back. The clear spring and the bubbles and the mermaids and the prince were lovely. I watched Quincy being enthralled with all this. He covered his ears when the wicked witch took away the little mermaid's voice. "Don't worry," I whisper in his ear.
Quincy liked the peacocks wandering around the premises, occasionally blaring out their happiness with being in this odd place. As Andy dodged a bird outside the men's room he and Quincy had just left, Quincy says, "These are my friends!" Andy cautions him about getting too close to these birds we know to be really dicey.
Quincy sees nothing to entice him in the souvenir stand. He's not an "Iwanna" kid. He reads his catalog all the way home. I tell him that I need some time to read the science section of the NYT so he should play quietly with his trains. And then we put out a huge puzzle on the table in the kitchen and we complete it. Quincy does most of it while scooting around on the the table.
We take time to swim and play by the pool, go on a golf cart ride around the property to see all our favorite places: the blackberry crop (all eaten by racoons), the spread of small pine trees planted by nature from the huge mama pine tree, the pond where the cranes had their nest and hatched their eggs. I had dreaded his questions about this but he was satisfied when I told him that the cranes had flown away and gone north for the summer. "I know where north is," he says. "Are they coming back?" I tell him that they will be back before Christmas. So we slowly move on and pay attention to the cow who will have a calf any day and we know this because the cow looks fat and her udder is huge.
I love having this interesting and beautiful child spend time here. He picks peppers in the garden, looks for tree frogs and gopher tortoises. He is never bored, unfailingly polite, eats anything and sleeps reliably for twelve hours. I have had this pleasure from other grandchildren and it is the spice of life.
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