Beating Out Plymouth Rock: Florida was First, and our Peaceful Place

We stood at the metal gates and listened to the sound of a woman screaming “Help!” It didn’t sound exactly like a woman—more like if a cat could shrilly meow “Help!” The peacocks were feisty this morning.

We entered the grounds of our peaceful place. Calling it hallowed ground might be more accurate, but often hallowed goes along with peaceful, so I suppose the words agree. By daylight it is peaceful; by dark it is spooky. Small paved paths twist and intertwine, leading around the grounds of the first thanksgiving in North America.

Last fall when I was researching some Thanksgiving materials to do for my son’s homeschooling, I stumbled across the fact that the first thanksgiving took place half a century before that iconic American story of Plymouth Rock. And it happened right here on the coast of Florida. It must be a downer for the folks up north to find the true first thanksgiving involves Spanish soldiers and salted pork with garbanzo beans.

Our peaceful place is the location of the first thanksgiving in addition to the first mass, and therefore is a religious site. I am not a particularly religious person, but I don’t dislike the fervor that other people experience. As a child I went to a Catholic church, where I did learn to love the peaceful sense of power that emanates from such places. This is a place that feels sacred.

We passed the old shrines made of coquina blocks. Long, tall sable palms stretched for the sky, scattered here and there with old cedars. Those cedars looked like war heroes, limping along in bandages of orange tape and lost limbs. The tiny paths cross each other, wrapping around ancient gravestones. This is yet another place that strongly reminds me of Europe, with a Floridian flair. We stopped to look at some of the stones, so worn by weather that the engraved letters are difficult to read.

“This one is a man that died before your great grandfather was born,” I said to my four-year-old son. “And this one was a boy that died at only age seventeen.” We bent down on the cement, leaning over the sod to look at the white stones too close to the path. We might have been standing above old bones. “Life is tricky. Sometimes it is short. Nobody knows how long they will live.”

This was a discussion I’ve never had with my son, and not one I really want to burden him with at such a young age. But the theme is everywhere. I have been blessed to experience very little loss, and only in the last couple of years. I made it almost to age thirty before I experienced the first loss that sunk in as a reality—a person was gone forever. I hope that my children can live in that blissful ignorance of knowing but not really knowing for as long as they can. Once you’ve experienced it, there is always a small part of sadness at the loss that lasts forever, even though acceptance comes.

The toddler was dancing around, desperate to run off the paths and parade around the gravestones, so we moved on. It was a welcome disruption, although I spent thirty seconds uselessly but sternly trying to explain to the toddler why we don’t run amok in an ancient graveyard.

We moved on toward the altar of the first mass. An old, rusty fat chain hangs around it in protection. There isn’t much to see about it, and I felt nothing toward it. Just beyond, in the waters that likely the Spanish descended from, were dolphins gliding around. We stopped and admired their shining black fins peeking out every so often.

We moved on to the central sacred part of my peaceful place, the chapel. As stated, I am not a deeply religious person—I feel God more strongly away from church—but in places like this you can feel the devotion pulsing off of it. Rows of candles burned brightly and a kind looking woman sat to one side, counting on a beautiful blue rosary and chanting softly to herself, or rather, to Mother Mary. The positivity was pulsating off of her, mingling with the energies of devotion in that tiny chapel. The children sensed it and were hushed, only making noise by inelegantly bumping into the pews.

We left it, and walked around the old graves of the nuns that came to teach the newly freed slaves after the civil war. We passed the memories of unknown people, some of which that had lost the top half of their gravestone. They will be nameless for the rest of time. In a way it is kind of sad, but there is no one left that remembers them, so now it is only a fact.

We walked to the bridge to look down at the water trickling in from the waterway connection between ocean and a tiny pond. An egret stood tall, elegant, and perfectly still. Next to it, a sea turtle on the slick cement that water trickled across before entering the pond. He looked trapped, continually slipping off the cement as though he was desperate to make it back to the waterway. I watched for several minutes, wondering if I should try to help him. I am growing wiser by bits and pieces as I age, so I had the good sense to wait and watch. As it turns out, he was only climbing up with his clumsy curved front legs so that he could get his mouth on the slimy plants that were growing there. I’m glad I didn’t try to tip-toe through those perilous oyster beds to save a sea turtle from his breakfast. It seems to be a theme in life: Just wait and watch. Most things work themselves out.

Apparently, in June my peaceful place is also a place of sweat. Lots and lots of sweat, pouring from anyone standing there as the morning turns to afternoon. The children started to complain.

“We will be sweating until October, possibly November,” I said in that know-it-all motherly sort of voice, but I agreed. It was time to head home. We passed some more stones, and I thought on how both of my children have a cough, but I have the blessing of living in this era, where a cough means very little.

My daughter was whining on the way out, and it being hot, naturally I had less patience. I was getting aggravated, but then she tripped and fell on the cement. I held her close to me, her little chest heaving in sobs against mine, and thought how grateful I am for whining, meaningless coughs, and fall downs. I squeezed their little hands on the way back to the van.