Palm: A Tree in Four Seasons, Winter/Spring

A white business card with 20-point diagnosable font, “Larry and Jeanie Hughes*, Resort Dressing.” It’s something like Ranch dressing, but instead of covering plates of leafy greens, this dressing covers ladies of a certain age, affect, and an affinity for gold lame'.

Next to their names, to punctuate, to exclamate and to illustrate what had already been said, with the springy green lively font and the aforementioned “Resort,” is a Palm tree with its neck swaying, right towards “Hughes” about to hit the “s” as if to say, "Look, we are close- tight- simpatico.”

You see, the palm is the icon of resort living; the palm is to the resort what the Christmas tree is to Christmas, ubiquitous. They are everywhere, even if they don’t belong there. Developers have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to create that feeling of resort-ness. You know when you have arrived at a resort, a palm tree will be there to tell you so.

My father knew all of this when he chose this powerful symbol of rest and relaxation-golf and tennis-fun and sun on their business card and when he placed it in the palms of buyers from golf boutiques from La Quinta to La Costa the card with the palm was a secret handshake of resort affiliation. This palm said that he was a man who was not afraid to wear plaid pants or pastel polos and that he knew his way around the golf greens.

You see, my parents made and sold warm-up suits, caftans, and golf wear, and froggy jackets. The jackets all have a theme, excess, paraphernalia, and geegaws. The jackets were worn by people in places with Palm Trees---Tall Palms, Date Palms, in Palm Springs, 29 Palms, Rancho las Palmas, La Palma and Palm Beach. It was kind of Liberace meets Iron Chef collection, about which, whenever I would make horrified faces at the Grandmother jacket that was #1 for the spring season, my father would offer an elucidating critical fashion analysis: “Don’t sneer, it paid for your braces.” Yet, I noticed he always held the ducky and froggy jackets away from his body as if they contained some kind of toxic chemical that he feared might harm him, or, even worse, the gingerbread or appliqués might crawl off and attack his Hickey Freeman suits.

"These Jackets go like hot cakes. They sell themselves; I stand back, and they sell themselves. Why do I bother to come?” He would ask rhetorically. After a few drinks, he would change his story and tell us that their success all stemmed from his master sales skills and how he pushed this schlock off on people who had no idea what they were doing, “Like that the nit-wit at the El Dorado golf shop, he would have bought only two of the Grandma jackets and those in smalls,” Then he would roar with ebullient pride, "I got him to buy 30 units.”

The tall palms growing row after row---as we drove to and from my parent’s appointments ---made me dizzy. They were spaced too close together, like the palms. I couldn't keep count of them as we drove. I sat and waited while they sold to the pro-shops at the golf clubs on the movie star streets. I was on Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore Drive. There are no good movie stars in Palm Springs. I could either sit in the Cadillac or wait in the clubhouse where golfers would come in for the 19th hole. I sat and read Nancy Drew and minded my own business and all the creepy old men would ask me if I was going to be a golfer when I grew up. I loved to say no as I sucked down my Shirley Temples, and dove for cherries and picked at club sandwiches. Or, I would wait in the car and count palm trees and sweat and listen to the radio and dream of the pool at the club.

On an afternoons off, my father played golf and my mother tried on clothing on other than froggy jackets at Saks. I was taken for a date shake at Hadley’s Date Farm, 35 minutes from our condo. People were lined up buying dried dates, candied dates, dipped dates and assorted dates for friends and family back home, as part of their Palm experience. Part of the Hadley date experience is the date shake. I was a kid, and if someone asked me if I wanted a shake, I said yes---I did not stop to consider that they might put a vile fruit in it. I slurped it up, expecting shakes like at Mc Donalds. Instead it tasted like something you should be served before a GI procedure, a chunky liquid sugar with a viscose after taste. I repaid my babysitter for the trip to the date farm by vomiting after she forced me to drink what she called an “expensive treat.” I don’t understand all the effort to crawl the palm tree for such an unpleasant little fruit. A long journey that is not worth the trip.

Palm II: Spring
Spring is Christmas in fashion---or is it summer? All I know is that we spend every Christmas in Hawaii getting ready for the next big season. Swatches fly as we board the DC-10, no family vacation-no luau-no Don Ho-no Brady Bunch in Hawaii shenanigans. The swaying palms at Christmas are my spruce, my Douglas fur (and yet I fear Santa won’t come to me).

Santa will not find me. My mother explains between her Mai Tai and a trip to the factory how in Honolulu (she says it in that affected way, like a native, like the way that newscasters who are Caucasian are talking along at a clip and then will come along a Spanish word and roll their ‘r’s in a crazy Castilian way); it drives me crazy. She tells me how Santa knows where I am, how she left a forwarding address for me at the Kahala Hilton and he will find me. He will come in through the lanai, (notice how she says lanai instead of patio; we are here two hours and she is local Lelani).

My anxiety only partially quelled, I went on a variety of planned activities with the babysitters: I had hula lessons, a trip to the Hawaiian village, and a sugar cane plant – everywhere was the ubiquitous palm, the Christmas tree with no lights or decorations or fragrant aroma. On Dec. 24th, there were no activities scheduled. I was watching TV when I heard the music down on the beach, "Melikalikimaka,” the Hawaiian Christmas carol. Then I saw it: Santa, a Hawaiian Santa coming down the beach of Waikiki on a doon buggy thing, wrapped in red tinsel and red and white flowers, with pigs pulling the doon buggy. Real live pigs. Santa was a beefy-looking guy in red trunks with a bright red lei around his neck. Santa was screaming like crazy to the people on the beach, “Melikalikimaka.” And the poor pigs were pulling him and there was not a reindeer in sight. Not even Rudolph. I knew when I saw him I was doomed, if that was how Santa planned to get around this Christmas. Well, it was clear Santa was on vacation, too; he was at a resort---there would be no gifts. He would be up on the lanai of the 16th floor---just as soon as pigs could fly.

To be continued....

*Names have been changed.

Palm picture comes from here.