How to Cast a Shadow on the Sunshine State

written by The Bison April 8, 2011

Written by Adria Giles

During my first year at Harding, I grew accustomed to feeling somewhat exotic.”Where are you from?” people would ask.As soon as the word “Florida” escaped my lips, people would fly into fits of ecstasy induced by sunshine-and-beach images even if they had no idea where my city, Jacksonville, is.While I don’t delight in this reaction, I really can’t blame a person for becoming goggle eyed at mention of my home. I have to admit: Florida is awesome. Everywhere I go there is a range of palm trees from tall and elegant to short and chubby, wide sun-bleached boulevards, sandy boardwalks, shimmering rivers refracting diamonds of sunlight, restaurants where the seafood is fresh-caught and old scraggly trees covered in Spanish moss. An orange tree grows in my backyard, a magnolia tree in the front. Living in Florida is like being on vacation every day of the year.I never expected my boyfriend to supplant me in terms of exotic hometown, but when I started dating Garrett, that’s what happened. People at church would ask our names and where we were from, and at “Florida” they would start to smile and nod happily – until Garrett casually mentioned where he was from, starting with asking:”You know where Hawaii is, right? And you know where Fiji is?”

A person using Hawaii and Fiji as reference points for his burgh obliges the rest of us to be at least reasonably awestruck. The people we were talking to would drop their jaws and raise their eyebrows and completely forgetaboutmysunnypeninsula in favor of a tropical island.Garrett is from American Samoa, a United States territory located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the equator. For the first two years we dated, I heard stories regularly about the island. When it was winter in Arkansas and 20 degrees, Garrett would look up the temperature of my hometown in Florida. It’s usually about 50 degrees in the winter, which sounds nice in comparison to Arkansas, until Garrett continued to look up his hometown of Pago Pago, where it is 85 degrees year-round.

When we went to Jacksonville for spring break he would say, “This beach is nicer than Malibu and Waikiki, but not as nice as mine back home. My beach in Samoa is better than all because of its bent-over palm trees, mountains on the other side of the cove, little hermit crabs that try to nibble your toes, rope swings that land you in the waves, and occasional dolphins and whales.”

Jacksonville beach has occasional stingrays, jellyfish and sharks.Recently, I was able to visit American Samoa with him and experience the tropical island motif for a month. The island is a vibrant green and explodes with vegetation in vivid colors, surging down steep abrupt mountains and halting at coasts where the short dark beaches meet an ocean so blue it almost looks artificial. Men and women alike wear sarongs called sulus, and no woman ever forgets to place a flower in her hair. In Garrett’s family’s yard grow pineapple, coconut and a local tuber called taro that tastes like a potato with leaves like spinach, and people from church gave us fresh avocado and mangos. I returned from Christmas break with a tan, lower stress levels and a sulu-based wardrobe.Eventually, we found a sort of happy balance by accepting that we both grew up in paradise. To me, paradise implies “Atlantic,” but where Garrett is from the term refers to “Pacific.” Differences in dialect, nothing more.ADRIA GILES is a guest contributor for the Bison. She may be contacted atagiles@harding.edu

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