EXCERPT
JUDY BLUME: A LIFE
BY MARK OPPENHEIMER
IN THIRD GRADE, Essie took Judy, David, and her moth- er, Nanny Mama, to Florida, while Rudy stayed behind with his dental practice. In Miami Beach, where they would live for two school years, everything was different: the weather, the school, the neighbors, and Judy herself. “I was very shy and quiet as a child until my Florida years. And then I came home to Elizabeth, a different person.” The move to Miami Beach was prompted by concerns about David’s health. He had been diagnosed with a kid- ney infection. This was about exactly the time that anti- biotics, now the standard treatment for a kidney infection,
became widely available, and David may not have received them. Whatever the case, the doctors recommended warm weather, a popular cure of that time. On their advice, Es- sie decided to relocate with her children to Florida, where Rudy would visit them once a month. Essie refused to move until after hurricane season had passed, so the three Sussmans, along with Nanny Mama, arrived in Miami in late October 1946, just in time for Hal- loween (Judy went as a “peanut queen,” in a dress onto which her mother had sewn peanuts, and wearing a crown of peanuts constructed by David). They moved into a small
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