Once you’ve reached the end of Interstate 95, you know you’re getting close to Coral Gables. Like the highway that divides the city, the town’s residents are split neatly into two categories: one half is there to begin their lives while the other half arrived there to die.
Funnily, the unyielding greenery of the willow trees that drip Spanish moss over winding, speed-bumped roads offer a quiet comfort to these two coexisting populations. The consequences of an embarrassing night out partying or decades of not speaking to your ex-wife seem smaller in the town’s collective psyche, as the promise of a nearly identical sunny day lies just twenty-four hours ahead. I was there to begin my life, an eighteen-year-old freshman at the University of Miami amid a sea of likeminded kids from the Northeast who were sick of snow and early sunsets. The university’s campus, dotted with bright white ibises and palm trees, sits beside fraternity houses dripping in toilet paper and beer. Just beyond them, senior citizen centers with sprawling golf courses and seventy-plus housing communities complete the town’s strange juxtaposition.
Each day wraps up in a highly saturated explosion of pinks, purples, and oranges that reflect off the thunderheads gathered over the ocean to the town’s east. While those there to die might see the clouds as a hint to the existence of a higher power waiting beyond the grave, those there to live see an unlimited potential for the future, for the beauty of the world. Same sky, same zip code, different interpretations.
It’s like looking into a trick mirror when those there to die mingle with those there to live. A glimpse into the past, a sneak peek into the future, the deeper implications remain unspoken but are felt nonetheless. Conversations made up entirely of, “You probably don’t remember” mixed with “You wouldn’t get it now”. A lively push and pull sways through these interactions, subdued debates over whose reality is more alive today.
From the local middle school to the various avenues and boulevards, everything in the town is named after Ponce de Leon, the 16th century Spanish explorer who trampled through Florida in search of the fountain of youth. And while he never found it, the air of immortality seems to settle over the neighborhood every night, like humidity indiscriminately coating the blades of manicured grass and windows of the newest Porsche model parked in driveways.
My freshman year was defined by nightly strolls just off campus, my roommate and I passing a joint back and forth while slithering through streets lined with stucco houses. We would giggle at political lawn signs and trip over the tree roots that tore up the asphalt sidewalks, oblivious about the future and unaware of our youth.
Therein lies the magic of Coral Gables: the town plays a trick on its residents. The rustling fronds whisper to the youth, telling them they already know everything there is to know about life, about who they are. The elderly hear the whispers too. A wave of youth invigorates their bones, and nature beckons them outside to a world they forgot existed after decades in an office. For a moment, they feel reborn and new, their lives entirely malleable.
from my apartment in Coral Gables, 2018.