Bell Haven Blues

Because in our dreams we replay the moments we don’t want to forget while we’re awake…

Here’s how a recurring dream inspired me to paint for the first time.

Like a boogeyman hiding under the bed, nostalgia lies in wait. Unsatisfied with the idea that it can only captivate us while we are awake, nostalgia lurks and assumes that our dreams are also fair play.

While our time here in Miami has been fun, revisiting these memories has left me a bit restless. Last night, I was reminded of a recurring dream I used to have…

The fire…it burns and flickers before me.
The smell of the ink from my BIC pen takes me back to the fire every time.
I stand on the other side of the fence.
It is raining and I watch as the rain drops struggle against the power of the flames.
One wants to come down while the other pushes up.
One drenches, the other engulfs.
I stand…both feet on the ground.
My hands on the handle bars of my bike.
I have my L.A. Gear high tops on with the pink and black laces.
Acid wash jeans with pleats.
T-shirt with sleeves rolled to a cuff.
My hair, in its normal state of frizz.
In the distance, my mother is calling out to me.
Dinner must be ready – white rice, black beans, steak smothered in onions.
I can smell it. I am hungry.
The sun has set and the sky is turning a darker shade of navy.
My dad is home, cutting into his steak. His lungs are secretly being devoured by the disease that will eventually take him from us.
We were riding our bikes and picking tadpoles out of puddles.
That is…until I saw the fire.
I often smelled the smoke, but never actually saw the fire.
It is a distinct odor – a concoction of burning wood, aluminum, human souls, and dreams.
I see the embers float away as if by magic.
I stand there, transfixed.
Today, this fire is for me.
I watch and my eyes well up with tears.
I stand, and cry harder than I’ve ever cried before.
For myself, and for everyone watching from a distance.
The ash graces my cheek and sticks to my t-shirt.
A papal blessing from the fire.
Through the sound of the crackling wood, the twisting metal, the raindrops falling on the tin roof, and the wind slowly blowing the flames down to the ground, the fire whispers, “You are free…”
I push my high tops onto the pedals of my hot pink bike with the Barbie sticker nearly worn off from the top tube of its frame, and I ride fast.
Down one lane, then another, through the trees and the mud paths that divide each trailer from the rest, until I reach my own.
My mother is standing at the door under the black aluminum awning; each room visible from the doorway.
As I stand on the other side of the fence, I wonder if the fire will now come for me…here, in my home.
I turn around and in the distance, through the other trailers, the mud paths, and the trees, I see them, the embers…looking for me.

For years, I’ve had this same recurring dream about growing up in Bell Haven Park, where the sight of a burning trailer was not unusual. Most were caused by careless accidents and each event was a spectacle. You smell the smoke, you hear the screams and the sirens, and you rush out of your own home to join the crowd. You stand – sometimes with your arms around each other – and you watch, silently, surrounding the trailer, in act of solidarity as the flames dance their lustrous flamenco. The home owner, usually able to escape due to the minute size of the home and proximity of exits, stands unharmed on the sidewalk. Their intangibles going up in flames. Each memory, hope, and feeling landing on our shoulders only to be blown away with each sigh.

Whenever the news broadcast interviews victims of house fires, the sentiments expressed about their loss are always the same. “We lost everything.”  But the “everything” they refer to isn’t their couch, lawnmower, or even an heirloom locket…instead, it’s the memories associated with all of those things and more.

We have a tendency to suffer from what is labeled a surprisingly common phobia. Athazagoraphobia is the fear of being forgotten or ignored; the fear of forgetting.

To forget something – our car keys or an appointment – is a frustrating and unnerving feeling and even worse is the idea of forgetting someone. Maybe with time we stop recalling the exact timbre of their voice, but their face..to forget that, would be heartbreaking.

That is why we take photographs: to record, to document, to memorialize, to confirm, to calm our fears of forgetting.  Because in some warped sense we believe that whatever we cease to remember, ceases to exist.

This is the McFly family photo from the film Back to the Future (I told you I liked this movie).

All three McFly children stand as evidence to town scientist Emmet Brown in 1955 that, Marty McFly, his friend and the main character in the film, had indeed been to the future. As Marty moves about in the past, he breaks time travel rules that alter the timeline of life as it occurred for the McFly family. Each blunder causes a McFly kid to fade from the photo, as if they were never born.

Photographs are important because they prove existence. It helps, at the very least, to explain that at one time a person, place, or thing was here.

Today, there is a common trend at funerals where mourners post pictures or show a slideshow video of the deceased. My grandfather recently passed away and for his funeral I was asked to prepare a collage. All of his 96 years captured on a single canvas board.

The idea is to present our loved ones as we best remember them. It isn’t unusual to see guests smiling or laughing at a funeral, with damp eyes, as they point to a photo and reminisce “I remember this day…” and it seems that, if only for that moment, the person is once again brought to life – by a Polaroid.

“The realities of the past are swept away by time,” explains Donald D. Spencer, Author of the book Miami: Past & Present, “but the essence of the past is still approachable in old postcards and photographs.” This is true…even if the photos date back to pre-digital camera days when each shot was a gamble and most returned from the printer in a blurred and darkened state.

In our last post, Rudy & the Rose-Colored Glasses, I brought you along for the moment when I first returned to my childhood home – the trailers, the pool, the shuffleboard, and clubhouse – were all gone, with the exception of decaying utility poles. That day, I stood there, my fingers interlocked with the chain link fence, and all I could think about was a scene in the film Titanic, where tiny Rose Dewitt Bukater, the main character, sees the interior of the ship for the first time after 84 years. She stands, walks toward the television monitors and stares intently as the camera pans across walls, through doorways, and finally rests upon an object she recognizes. Ghostly violin music plays softly as rust particles and debris float about the ornate grille that once bedecked the 1st Class dining room doors of the RMS Titanic. If only for a moment, with her eyes fixed on the screen, an elderly Rose was back on the ship…her wispy white hair, now a fiery red and everything else as it once was.

The day I returned to Bell Haven Park in 2006, I wasn’t given that same opportunity. There were no remnants, no clues, or even a trace that life had ever existed on that lot. There I was, facing my own lost ship, yet the only thing that stood – next to disturbed patches of land – like grave markers, were wooden poles.

Rose’s nostalgic recalling of her time on the ship is brief. As reality catches up with her and she suddenly buries her face in her hands in a moment of exhale – the kind that makes your chest cave in. I know the feeling…

While attempting to do a little shopping for the remainder of our trip here in Miami, I Googled the nearest discount store, and there it was…the address. I knew it somehow…

The former address of Bell Haven Park, my childhood home, now covered with blacktop. The new home of a place where you can “Save Money, Live Better.” A Walmart…how very typical.

Just as Marty McFly desperately sought ways to remedy his disappearing siblings in Back to the Future, I too frantically searched for something that could bring back Bell Haven Park.

I located a forum website hosted by an individual named Don Boyd. On his site he posts photos of old Miami memories. He posted one particular photo – a tiny one that cannot be enlarged – of a 1953 trailer manufacturer ad featuring the Bell Haven Park pool.  This single picture generated nostalgia as far back as the 1950s for others who also appeared to have been searching for the same childhood memories.  You can read their wistful comments here.

State Archives of Florida, “Florida Memory” www.FloridaMemory,com; Photographer / Personal Author: Charles Barron, January 1953.

That was the Bell Haven Park they remembered. And for the most part…it was exactly the same for me 30 years later.  The magic of Miami, I guess.

There, on the lot directly behind the pool, faintly visible in the photographs, sat my trailer. Only bits and pieces of it exist in photographs…and the rest is up to me to fill in the blanks.

In moments like this, when you stare at a photograph wishing that you could somehow undo the cropping and see the whole picture…when all you have is a blurry still of a teasing shadowy figure that somewhat resembles a more tanned version of an 8-year-old me standing in the doorway of my home, sometimes our only option to silence the demands of our nostalgia, is to recreate the memory.

This past week, I did just that. I should preface this by saying that I have never painted before, but this trip has left me with a longing to want to communicate what remains of my memories of Bell Haven Park. A mix of what I remember and the dream that I had so often.

When I finished the painting, I stared at it for a while, unsure if I could rely on my mind’s eye. I needed confirmation. Was any of it even real?

My mother was the first to see it. “My goodness. It looks just like the trailer…” She stops. puts her hand to her chest and sighs. “It’s smaller. A mini version, but it looks just like…” This time, I stop her. “I know, Mom.  I know…” Something in the corner of the painting caught her eye – not the awkward and oversized  signature I fumbled to include while struggling to learn how to make curves with the paintbrush – but on the left, there it was…”Is that a fire?”

Bell Haven Park was real. But the dream and the fire? Just vivid reminders perhaps of the delicacy of the human mind and the fact that we can’t pick and choose which memories nostalgia will trigger or why. I smile, happy that the embers finally found me and wouldn’t let me “forget”.

JUST JOINING US ON OUR MIAMI TRIP?  CHECK OUT DAY ONE OF OUR MIAMI SERIES: “MEET THE WEIRDO AT THE WHEEL...”