Nash to Naples
I spent most of my adult life in Nashville, a fine landlocked city where winter settles in like a wet gray blanket and people consider a hill with a few trees a scenic overlook. Nashville had music, character, barbecue, and enough rainy days to make a person question her will to live by February. I wanted warmth. I wanted sunshine. I wanted water—the kind that sparkled in front of me while I sat under an umbrella pretending I was one minor inconvenience away from becoming a full-time Jimmy Buffett tribute act.
Naples, Florida, looked perfect on paper. It had beaches, palm trees, art, restaurants, bike paths, sunshine, and a shocking shortage of endocrinologists. It promised a new life: no more landlocked longing, no more driving home from work in the dark, no more seasonal depression creeping up my spine like kudzu. I imagined myself gliding through my third act on a beach cruiser, skin glowing, hair wind-tousled, soul restored.
Then I arrived and discovered that Naples is less a town than a weather event with a valet stand.
In Nashville, seasons changed politely. Leaves turned, sweaters appeared, people bought chili ingredients, and everyone pretended they were emotionally prepared for January. In Naples, there are two seasons: “season” and “surface of the sun.” During season, the snowbirds descend from Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, Montreal, and any other place where winter requires both thermal underwear and psychological resilience. They arrive in November, multiply by January, and by February every road resembles a luxury-car evacuation drill.
Traffic in Nashville could be irritating, but at least it was recognizable. In Naples, traffic is a competitive sport played by people driving Bentleys, Maseratis, Jaguars, and Porsches while making sudden turns into Waterside Shops as if Gucci were offering organ transplants. Snowbirds honk, brake unpredictably, and swerve with the confidence of people who have survived forty winters and will not be delayed by a mere stop sign. Within twenty-four hours of arrival, everyone is dressed like they are auditioning for a cruise brochure.
Costco provided my first true cultural education. In Nashville Costco, shoppers looked like normal people preparing for weather, football, and perhaps a casserole-based emergency. Carts contained rotisserie chickens, paper towels, bulk cheese, frozen lasagna, and enough Diet Coke to survive a tornado warning. Naples Costco is different. Naples Costco is where wealth, dermatology, and competitive thinness collide.
My first trip nearly required medical supervision. Women in Lululemon skirts, deeply tanned and suspiciously sinewy, pushed carts filled with bean sprouts, brussel sprouts, arugula, collagen powder, and bottled waters harvested from glaciers that probably had their own publicist. Their skin had the texture of designer handbags left too long in a tanning bed. I looked around for the Nashville shoppers with pale complexions and carts full of carbohydrates, but they were nowhere to be found. I had crossed not just a state line but a grocery-store dimension.
Publix was worse financially. In Nashville, grocery shopping was an errand. In Naples, it is a wealth assessment. You walk in needing eggs, toothpaste, and lettuce, and leave wondering whether you should have refinanced your home. Costco remains my emotional support warehouse, even if the local shoppers make me feel like I should apologize to my cart.
Then there is the heat. I moved to Florida because I wanted summer, and Florida apparently heard me and replied, “Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart.” Naples summer is not merely hot. It is personal. The humidity wraps around you like a wet mammogram gown and follows you everywhere. You do not walk outside; you are swallowed by a mouth.
By June, the air has weight. Frozen food cannot be casually placed in the trunk unless you enjoy serving soup formerly known as ice cream. Popsicles are a fantasy. Lettuce wilts before you start the car. I have considered taking a cooler to Publix like I am transporting a kidney for transplant. Walking the dog at 6 a.m. should feel virtuous. In Naples, it feels like entering a sauna built inside another sauna and then set on fire. Outdoor exercise becomes less about fitness and more about survival. You cannot carry enough water, wear few enough clothes, or summon enough optimism to make it pleasant. Even nudity would not help, and in Naples, someone would probably report you to the condo board before you reached the mailbox.
I also learned that Naples is an excellent place to feel young. The median age appears to be somewhere between “early retirement” and “biblical.” Low-riding tricycles with six-foot caution flags glide along the sidewalks, each flag silently screaming, “Do not kill me.” I pass them at fifteen miles per hour with white knuckles, terrified that one wrong move will turn me into the lead story on the evening news.
Social life has its own rhythm in Naples, although “rhythm” may be generous. I joined a wine-tasting group and quickly learned that in Naples, 5 p.m. is not happy hour; it is practically nightlife. The average age of the group hovered around eighty-five, give or take a decade or two, which made me feel like a spring chicken with a valid driver’s license. Still, I loved seeing so many seniors out in the world, drinking wine, flirting, laughing, and dancing as if Medicare had issued them a backstage pass.
The dancing, however, was its own art form. Their movements were so irregular and so entirely unattached to any recognizable beat that I began to suspect each person was listening to a different song inside his or her own head. Arms flailed. Feet shuffled. Hips attempted negotiations with gravity. It looked less like dancing and more like a yoga class gone wrong during a mild electrical storm. I kept 911 on speed dial, just in case someone suffered a hip fracture or the sudden complete thrombosis of the widow-maker before the second pour.
And yet, for all its absurdity, Naples seduced me. The sunsets are ridiculous, as if the sky has been drinking. The Gulf turns silver, then pink, then orange. Dolphins perform without charging admission. Manatees float around like enormous aquatic retirees who have figured out the whole point of life: eat, drift, and avoid unnecessary exertion.
Nashville gave me roots. Naples gave me humidity, dermatology bills, expensive groceries, traffic driven by people in cars worth more than my first house, and a new understanding of what it means to sweat behind your knees.
I moved from a landlocked town to a tourist town in search of paradise. I found it, more or less. Paradise, it turns out, requires sunscreen, reservations, a cooler in the car, and the humility to know that no matter how glamorous the brochure looks, Florida will always have the final word.
