It's in the air

When the plane door opened Sunday afternoon, I took my hoodie off even before I got out of the seat.

The Keys air was rolling in, and I was ready to roll out.

My bag was maybe 12th off the carousel, and when I got outside I looked for the cabbie with the biggest smile. She was tall and lanky in denim, with long grayed hair and a huge grin. "Welcome home," she said.

"Does it show that much?", I asked.

"I've seen you around, and you look so happy to be back" she said, and hefted my bag into the trunk of the shell-pink cab. "The front seat has better A/C," she said, but opened the windows and we both took a deep breath.

We turned onto South Roosevelt and she said, "I've always known it from the air -- coming back, I mean. For me, it's when I cross Card Sound on my motorcycle. I can smell it."

And so could I, as we went by Smathers Beach and then past Higgs -- the hint of iodine, the salt tang, a gassy bit of mangrove.

And so I was home. Monday was trimming the palm pods, sawing off old fronds, cleaning the pool, pruning the salt-killed shoots dangling into it, sweeping up leaves, pulling the plumbago into some sort of disorderly order (I ran into Linda later at Fausto's, and she confessed she'd been snatching blossoms while we were gone -- good, I said!), cutting back the jasmine . . . and I'd soaked through a T-shirt by 8 a.m. Early summer.

When I talked to Robert, he said it was sweater weather again in Tennessee, in the 50s.

I decided to chill out on Tuesday, but only metaphorically.