Going Gypsy: One Couple's Adventure from Empty Nest to No Nest at All

by David James

  I have never been so happy to have a rental car, because there was no other way out of town. The best option seemed to be to go north, inland, away from the storm. My brother and his family live in St. Louis, and a quick call to my sister-in-law confirmed what I already knew: her casa was our casa for as long as we needed it to be. But first we needed to find out what the school had planned.

  “Let’s go see what’s going on at orientation, then we can leave right after that.”

  That brightened Decibel’s face up a bit. Maybe she would get to sing after all. When we arrived at the auditorium there was a fair amount of confusion. Unlike earlier in the day, when no one seemed to have a care in the world, news of the impending danger seemed to have made the rounds. Before Decibel went up to the stage I told her that I would be waiting right by the exit.

  “As soon as you finish singing come straight back here so we can get the flock out of here.”

  She nodded and headed for the stage. From my spot by the door I watched my daughter climb up on stage and talk with the dignitaries. I really wanted her to get to perform. My daddy heart was beaming with pride, but just when it looked like she might get her moment, the university president took the microphone.

  “An evacuation has been declared. Anyone who has transportation should leave immediately. If you do not have transportation please stay here. We have buses coming to take everyone to safety.”

  That brought about some minor chaos in the hall, but Decibel fought her way back to me. I felt horrible for her. Her little teenaged heart was crushed. All I could offer was the hope that they would do the program again after the storm.

  By now the city was taking on an ominous tone. Even Decibel felt it. Lines at the gas stations were nearly a mile long. Luckily we picked up our car the night before with a full tank. The freeways were completely jammed. Police were everywhere. An air of urgency, with a dash of chaos, had taken hold.

  I figured we’d better grab some stuff at a store. Even though I was not thrilled at the prospect of wasting several hours fighting a crowd, it looked like we would be stuck in our car for quite a while, maybe all night. We were once again shocked by the lack of preparations. The huge windows of the supermarket were not being covered, and the surprisingly small amount of customers inside were only buying handfuls of items. The lady checking out in front of us with one gallon of water and some Vienna sausages said to me, “The power will just be out for an hour or two.” I hope she made it through.

  By the time we got out of the store, the police had announced contra-­flow lanes for the highways. With all traffic, in all lanes, on both sides of the highway being directed outbound, insanity was prevailing on the roads. This was anybody who’s ever held a steering wheel’s worst nightmare. An entire major metropolitan area was trying to drive out of town, all at the same time, on just three or four highways.

  The ninety miles to the Mississippi border took us over eight hours to cover. That’s at an average of less than twelve miles an hour. I had plenty of time to figure that out in my head while we creeped along. The next hundred miles were a little better—we made them in five hours or so. Then it began to clear out a little, but there were still no vacancies at any of the motels. Finally, with the Sunday morning sun coming up, we found a funky little place in Arkansas and collapsed. Later that day we got back out on the road to St. Louis. By the time we made it up to my brother’s place, the storm had pounded the Gulf Coast.

  On Monday, Tulane was still planning on opening in two weeks. New Orleans had dodged the worst of the storm and the levees hadn’t broken yet. We decided to fly back home, and then Decibel could come back up on her own in a couple of weeks. I called the airline, and they were very helpful about arranging our tickets.

  The only thing left was to turn in the car. Obviously I couldn’t return the car to the office where I had picked it up, but the company was nice enough to waive the one-way drop-off fee. That was quite swell of them since their vehicle would have been destroyed if it had stayed in New Orleans. However, drop-off fee or not, they didn’t have an office in St. Louis. They informed me that I could return the vehicle to either Chicago or Kansas City, or just keep paying for it until their office in New Orleans reopened.

  I had already booked our flight from St. Louis, leaving that evening. Damn, should have called the car place before I booked the ­tickets. The best option I could come up with was to drive to Chicago, turn in the car, and get my exhausted ass back to St. Louis in time for a 6 PM flight. It was 10 AM. No problem.

  The highway was still full of people fleeing north from Katrina, but I picked my way through the traffic and made it to Chicago in pretty good time. I was working well with my combination of adrenaline and sleep deprivation, clinging to just the proper mixture of caffeine and frantic.

  The only thing left to slow me down was security at the airport. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to get airport security’s undivided attention, but if they did, looking completely frazzled while running furiously for a flight, with no luggage, and a one-way ticket purchased right before take-off does a fine job of it.

  I was pulled out of every line, sent into special booths, quizzed, grilled, questioned, and interrogated at every possible checkpoint. Luckily, I never heard that butt-scrinching snap of a latex glove going onto a hand, and I had a good story. I think they might have even felt a little bit bad for me. But that didn’t stop every single person I talked to from marking up my boarding pass. By the time I used it to actually get on the plane, it looked like a tic tac toe game where both players used red markers.

  My brother had Decibel waiting for me at the St. Louis airport, and we caught our six o’clock to Puerto Rico with seconds to spare. It was in San Juan, waiting for our puddle jumper home, where we first saw the devastation from the broken levees on CNN. Decibel was beat, emotionally spent. Me too. All I could do was state the obvious.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t think you’re going to Tulane.”

  And she never did.

  Within a few days we were blown away by how many universities stepped up to the plate and were willing to take in students from Tulane, no questions asked, even forgoing tuition. Decibel tried her sister’s school in Washington, DC, for a semester, but unlike The Piglet, hated it. She transferred to a small theater school in New York City.

  There’s no way to know whether this situation resulted in a better life experience for her than four years at Tulane would have, but I think it did. I can say this for certain, though: I am proud of her coming through the episode and embracing her new path. All at the top of her lungs.

  Meanwhile we learned a valuable lesson about sending a kid to college. Be flexible.

  4

  Generic Midwestern Directional University

  With Decibel ending up in the Big Apple, we also got schooled in the subject of housing costs for students. Her rent soared to skyscraper heights—although, the fact that rent can be an enormous expenditure when sending a kid to college was not a lesson with which we were wholly unfamiliar. Housing The Piglet in our nation’s capital had nearly matched her tuition penny for penny.

  At least with The Boy our nest egg wouldn’t take quite the beating that it had with the girls. Unlike his sisters, who attended highly regarded private institutions in big cities, he was heading to one of those state universities with a direction in their name, in a generic little Midwestern college town. A Southwest Central Northern State U type of thing. Generic Midwestern Directional University (GMDU)—Go Fighting Soybean Shuckers, Go! He had a good ­reason though; GMDU has an excellent aviation program, his chosen field.

  We expected that The Boy’s living expenses should be quite a bit lower than we were used to, but still, dorms are expensive everywhere, and there was no telling what apartments went for near GMDU.

  It certainly wasn’t a part of our plan, or lack thereof, to go broke getting our offspring through school. Plus, if we were going to Go Gypsy, our income would take a major h
it. We needed an idea to keep some cash flowing, a brainstorm that would rain down some dough. Banking on Veronica finding freelance tech work while I picked up a gig here and there along the way wasn’t going to cut it. I did have an ace in the hole. I had kept a very good relationship with my agent in Europe and continued to tour over there once or twice a year, but that wasn’t going to cover us.

  Then a thunderbolt struck.

  We had always done well with the real estate we owned, so I tossed this notion out to Veronica:

  “What if we sell this place and use the money to buy some rental property right near The Boy’s school? He can live in one apartment and we’ll collect rent from the rest. Bingo, lower costs for college plus some income for us. The old two birds with one stone trick.”

  No response, but she was thinking. That gave me time to sell her, and myself, on the idea.

  As usual, we turned to the Internet for answers. It turned out that we weren’t the first people to think of this. Shocking, I know. It’s a fairly common method of furnishing housing for students, and it seems to work out well, as long as they don’t go all Animal House on the place.

  Searching a little more, we found some properties for sale in the Generic Midwestern Directional University College Town that The Boy was headed for.

  “Look at these—there are some really good deals on these big old houses right near the campus that have been turned into apartments.”

  While I was looking at possibilities, Veronica started crunching some numbers. It was beginning to make sense to her, to both of us. This might be workable.

  “But where will we live after we sell our house?” she asked, sticking a pin in the balloon.

  Oops, hadn’t thought of that. I guess every idea has some minor details that need to be worked out.

  “Um, I’m not sure. In one of the apartments while we figure it out?” I half-asked, half-stated. “We’re going to have to be flexible, adapt on the fly. You know, the plan is no plans.”

  Veronica lifted one eyebrow. A tangible option popped into my head.

  “The Boy’s college orientation is in a couple weeks. How about I go up with him to take a look at some of these buildings?”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “We need to know more before we can make a decent decision.”

  With a few emails and phone calls, we’d lined up a realtor, Smiley ­WideTie & Associates, ready to show the properties we picked out in The Boy’s Generic Midwestern Directional College Town. Next thing I knew, I was flying two thousand miles from our island home with nothing more than a college-bound boy and a big idea.

  Smiley himself picked me up at my hotel in the company Cadillac. He informed me that the buildings we chose were all in “the Historic District,” realtor-speak for what I learned later is more commonly called the Student Ghetto. These once grand old Victorian houses were long past their expiration date. The maintenance on one of these monstrosities would kill any hope of profit. After looking at a half dozen or so I got the picture, and it wasn’t pretty. The best of the buildings were dilapidated. Warning lights started flashing in my head. Being a slumlord was not part of our grand design.

  “Are there any other options?”

  “There are some condos on the other side of campus,” Smiley said. “More students are living over there these days.”

  A glimmer of hope.

  “Let’s take a look,” I said, hopping back into the Caddy.

  We drove over to a very nice one bedroom split-level condo where a graduating student was in the process of moving out. This was more like it. Well kept and ready to rent, with a price that was insanely low compared to what we were used to on St. Croix. I called Veronica right then and there.

  “I found a place!” I was pretty excited.

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Well, it’s a condo . . .”

  I explained the problems with the buildings in the Historic Student Ghetto and how, for what one of those old beat-up buildings cost, we could get several condos. They’re newer, closer to the school, and, best of all, have on-site maintenance crews. By the time I got off the phone we were both crazy in love with the idea.

  Smiley was ready to deal. He just happened to have paperwork in the Caddy. I made an offer and called Veronica again.

  “Start packing” were the first words out of my mouth.

  5

  Sixteen Boxes

  “Start packing.”

  How could two simple words simultaneously elate me and scare the ever-living crap out of me?

  Why were we doing this? Why, after all of those years preparing our children to go out into the world successfully, were we dropping out of it? Was this entire idea of ours just a load of denial and self-indulgence? Would this endeavor end with us returning to St. Croix, tails tucked between our legs, begging for our jobs back?

  I didn’t know.

  I didn’t want to confront these issues because that meant facing the hard truth; I had lost a huge part of my identity in the process of growing into adulthood, raising kids, and trying to fit the mold that society had carved out for me. I honestly didn’t know who I was anymore. Even scarier, I didn’t know who David and I were as a couple.

  I needed to find out, and it was going to take a wild adventure to do it. We couldn’t go about our regular lives with a big, gaping hole that the children used to fill creating a fissure between us. We needed to break away and find The Beanpole and The Valley Girl again. Use our experiences of growing up together and raising a family to find something more. Something new.

  I wasn’t in denial about my inclination to run away. When I need a change, I change big. I’m a fan of the clean break. I don’t like things to be muddled, and I abhor loose ends.

  It also hadn’t escaped me that by leaving our delightful little island we would be closer to The Spawn. As much as I knew I had to quit with the helicoptering, my hovering heart still knew what it wanted.

  So I began to rid myself of everything except a handful of personal items. We would no longer own a stick of furniture, an appliance, or a bit of clothing that we were not planning to wear in the near future (including those skinny jeans that were hanging around as incentive). I set about paring down our entire lives to fit into a few boxes.

  Sixteen boxes to be exact. Twenty-six years of marriage and three grown children later, I whittled everything down to sixteen boxes, most of them going to storage. Many of these boxes were tagged to go directly to one or the other of The Spawn once they were more settled. Some of these, containing photo albums or baby clothes, wouldn’t be opened for years.

  What is it about boxes, Bubble Wrap, and packing tape that drags us down Memory Lane?

  I couldn’t bear to part with the baby clothes—a sweet little black and white dress that The Piglet and Decibel both wore; a jumper with an appliquéd Scottie dog, handmade by David’s mother, that each of her four sons and The Boy had donned on special occasions.

  The boxes were taunting me. They seemed to make our upcoming exploits a bit too real.

  “You realize a change is ahead?” they said. They knew I had issues with change.

  I was no longer a mommy, but a long-distance mother. I no longer woke up in the middle of the night to breastfeed a sweet-breathed newborn, forced myself to stay awake waiting on a boundary-pushing teenager flirting with her curfew, or had to be up at the crack of dawn to shuttle the brood to school. If I was up late—or early—it was merely because I felt like it. Or, if I had to pee.

  “Why is this so daunting?” I asked the boxes.

  They simply sat there offering no answers. Apparently, boxes only pose questions.

  Prior to breeding, I was fearless. I was still a teenager when I hooked up with a musician and took off across the country. I never thought twice. If one of my daughters had even entertained such a brain-dead notion, my screams would have been heard in Reykjavík. Luckily, said musician was David—but seriously, what the hell had I been thinking?

 
I was madly in love and had the common sense of a lemming and a consequences-be-damned spirit of adventure. I packed my meager belongings into a giant Chrysler Newport dubbed The Sharkmobile and headed east out of California, destination Nashville. We drove through the desert in un-airconditioned splendor with one of my hands cupping the wind out the window, the other holding David’s. Our lovesick eyes saw only beauty reflected in that Chrysler’s gigantic hood. If The Sharkmobile had been a convertible, and I owned a headscarf, we’d have been stars in a hippie version of a Grace Kelly movie.

  Was I running away? Yup. I was only eighteen, but had already been living on my own for two years. I had known for a long time that a clean break from California was necessary if I were to remain sane.

  Had there been a movie called Nasty Divorce, it would have starred my parents. They were both wonderful people but had no business being married to each other. Honestly, I don’t know what was going through their minds. I have no doubt that they tried very hard to make it work, but their unhappiness manifested itself in insurmountably ugly ways. They called it quits after thirteen hurtful years, the year I turned twelve.

  What followed, as is often the case, was a series of tragically bad relationship choices. This led to the constant shuttling back and forth of my brother and myself, never-ending school changes, and just plain craziness.

  By the time I turned sixteen, I’d had enough. I had to get off the crazy train and find my own place. So I moved out, worked two jobs while finishing high school, and then hit a wall. I had no idea what to do with my life.

  The ensuing summer and fall were spent going to parties, staying out late, waking up at noon, and working the dinner shift as a waitress at a restaurant on the boardwalk in Ventura. My roommate, a thirty-something singer in a bar band, and I somehow scrounged up enough money every month to make the rent on a cute little seaside cabin. Soon enough, it became the crash pad for anyone who happened to show up at the late-night-’til-crack-of-dawn bonfires on the beach.