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

by David James

  My mother and her friends would often stop off at a local appliance store on their way home from school. The proprietor allowed them to watch television as a treat, since most families didn’t have sets of their own. He was a well-respected and established businessman in the neighborhood, and parents had no reservations about allowing their kids to have a little TV time after school.

  When my mother came home one day and broke down, telling her grandmother that this man was touching the girls in ways she didn’t understand, she was told it was a very bad thing, was forbidden to visit the store, and was never to speak of it again. Mom was spared the shame of what would likely have been a horrific public humiliation in her day, but lived her entire life under a cloud of guilt. She never fully comprehended that she shared no responsibility for the incident and was right to speak up. No one explained that her actions may have saved a large number of girls the pain of what she went through. I was in my thirties before she felt safe enough to tell me the story. In my eyes, she was a hero; yet in her own eyes, she was still some sort of fallen woman.

  Her grandmother, my great-grandmother, against the societal conventions of the time, didn’t exactly sweep everything under the rug, though. Tough-as-nails, she had emigrated from Bohemia alone at nineteen and, by my entire family’s recollection, was both a saint and the meanest woman you’d ever come up against. And you’d better not forget about the saint part or she would knock the fear of God into you. Right upside your head.

  The proprietor learned the hard way that he had picked the wrong kid to mess with. A week or so after the incident, my great-grandmother invited him over for coffee, ostensibly as a thank-you for the kindness he’d extended to her granddaughter and the other neighborhood children. He was greeted at the door by a four-foot-ten sweet little old lady with a pillowcase full of bricks. She proceeded to beat the devil out of him.

  I more peaceably dealt with the dangers my children faced by becoming a helicopter mom. Their early childhoods were spent under my careful watch. No roaming the neighborhood allowed. They had a big fenced-in yard, and friends came to our house to play. As they got older and their horizons expanded, I made sure to befriend each of their friends’ parents. Soon we became a troupe of helicopter mommies and monitored our children’s progress together. It seemed we all had parents or in-laws who told us we were being overprotective, but we knew we were right. Our heartstrings told us so.

  I had two teens and a tween when we moved to St. Croix, and the timing was good. In Nashville, I was no longer able to keep tabs on the kids the way I used to, and wanted to. They were in three different schools and their activities had me driving for hours every afternoon.

  I had the added responsibility, and honor, of taking care of my grandfather in Cleveland and trying my best to help out with my dying mother in California. There just wasn’t enough of me to go around, not in the way my immediate family was used to, or as I was used to. I look back at that period of my life and shake my head. How did I do it all?

  Moving to the islands was a lifesaver. The smaller school situation fit our family’s needs—and allowed me to hover in the manner to which I was accustomed. We were a close-knit community at the school; we watched out for each other. The parents knew the other families’ rules—and let each other know if a youngster stepped over the line. If a mother didn’t find out that her kid was messing up by being told straight-out, she could always rely on gossip. Gossip was never in short supply on St. Croix.

  I had the notion that once The Spawn were grown, my helicoptering would abruptly come to an end. It didn’t.

  Trouble finds a way into everyone’s lives—and as much as we hate it, trouble finds our adult children. Whether it rears its ugly head in a personal relationship, at work, or at school, it was challenging for a recovering helicopter mommy like myself not to want to swoop in and fix everything. I had to learn the hard lesson that I couldn’t.

  My first attempt at non-hovering was a bad breakup The Piglet went through back when she was in college. Sending the firstborn out of the nest was hard enough. Keeping my nose out of her business was even harder.

  The Piglet had her first real relationship while in her freshman year. It was serious enough that the boyfriend was brought home to meet the parents. When it fell apart, it fell apart bad. The Piglet was in no mood to spill her guts, and I’m pretty sure I did an adequate job of suppressing my desire to pry. I don’t know the gory details to this day, but I got the feeling she was more mad than hurt.

  Because I wasn’t privy to the facts, as a mother, I envisioned the worst. My worries grew weightier with every scenario I conjured up. Was she crying in bed alone? Were her friends being supportive? Was she eating? Did I need to fly up there and club the boyfriend like a baby seal?

  It turns out she handled it well and has learned from the experience. Her criteria for a suitable companion are more defined. She sees relationship warning lights more clearly. She grew by leaps and bounds. These are lessons she would not have learned if I had been there clubbing the seal.

  Our middle child, Decibel, was a disaster with money. She couldn’t save it. This was not a good combination with the feast-or-famine income of a New York City freelance artist–type. Frankly, the whole situation scared the tar out of me.

  Decibel went to theater school in the city, fell in love with it, and proclaimed she would never leave. She was hit by the you’re-an-adult-now freight train upon finishing school. Suddenly she was on her own monetarily, and New York City is expensive! Add to that a toxic job market with a tanking economy, and things were scary and bleak indeed.

  Not long after her graduation, we were hit up for a loan. Decibel knew our policy. We raise you, we put you through school, and then it’s time to grow up. Period. For her to ask, I knew she was swimming in dire straits. It was so hard to say no. It’s a lot more difficult to enforce a policy than to make one. When the abstract became a reality, my mettle was seriously tested.

  As she told me how lean things were, I heard myself producing gems like “get a second job” and “maybe you should move to a less expensive city,” when I really wanted to say, “honey, I’ll be right there and we’ll work this out together,” or the more dangerous, “how much do you need?”

  I stayed strong; caving in was simply not an option. Decibel was devastated by conversation’s end. I hung up the phone and burst into tears. I was in a funk for a good long time. Sometimes parenting really sucks.

  But she did go out and get a day job she hated, and continued to freelance. Now, years later, she is well established in her field. To my knowledge, she never went flat broke again. Going hungry can be a compelling teacher.

  I thought my helicoptering instincts were in check by the time The Boy left for college and we had become full-fledged empty nesters. After all, I had been parenting adults for half a decade by then; surely I had to have learned something.

  My initial test with The Boy came during his summer session exams after his freshman year. He was working toward his commercial pilot’s license, with FAA tests coming up, when he called us at G-pa’s to tell us he had the flu. Not just any flu, either; he had the swine flu. My whirlybird instinct went on immediate red alert.

  “Homebase, this is Helicopter One. Do you read me?”

  “Go ahead, Helicopter One.”

  “I’ve got a situation here. College kid with swine flu, big exam coming up. I’m gonna need to go in for some serious hovering.”

  “Copy, Helicopter One, but let’s think about this before initiating hovering maneuver . . .”

  “Nothing to think about, Homebase. Sick kid, big test, I’m going in. Engaging buttinski missiles to counter possible none-of-my-business defense systems.”

  “Helicopter One, Helicopter One, do not engage buttinski missiles, repeat, do not engage buttinski missiles!”

  “Must engage, must engage . . .”

  “No, Helicopter One, pull up, pull up! Do you read me? Pull up, before it’s too late!”
/>
  Trying to comfort a sick child from a distance is typically enough to launch the strongest of mommies into a funk, but my gloom was elation compared to how The Boy was feeling. Couple the flu with getting a poor grade on a crucial exam because of the flu, and he was inconsolable.

  In his weakened state, he saw no light at the end of the tunnel, and nothing I said made him feel any better. As a matter of fact, I sensed that I was making things worse.

  It’s hard for me to connect with The Boy. His older siblings are girls, and I know how to talk girls off a ledge. Heck, I usually have them laughing at the situation by the time we’re done.

  Not so with The Boy. Maybe it’s because he’s not as emotional in the first place, but he’s just not a talk-it-through kinda guy. At least not on my timetable.

  Because I am a talk-it-through kinda gal, there was added mommy stress in this disease debacle. I felt completely unhelpful and helpless. I tried every angle I could think of on The Boy, but all of my “this won’t seem so bad in a couple of weeks” and “let’s walk through the situation together” lines sounded ludicrous as soon as they spilled out of my mouth.

  Then it hit me like an I-don’t-need-you-Mommy ton of bricks; The Boy wanted to work things out on his own! My oversupportiveness was hindering his progress, and he was too nice (or too sick) to tell me to shut up and go away. Wow, no more kissing his boo-boos for me.

  Hmmm . . . could this mean I was being a hovercraft just to make myself feel better? If it is true that a mother is only as happy as her saddest child, was I just trying to fix my own situation?

  Oh my God, is this what meddling is?

  Jeez. How in the fudge am I supposed to know the difference between helping and meddling?

  I needed to get away from everyone, clear my head, and blow off some steam. So I hitched a ride with G-pa into town to hit a gym and think on the treadmill while he ran some errands. I had the settings cranked up to heavy sweat and was just beginning to convince myself that I wasn’t a meddler.

  However, as soon as I looked up, the TV broke in with one of those dreaded News Special Report graphics and ominous music. Never a good thing, it always makes my heart skip.

  My mind raced back to the last time a special news bulletin broke in when I was working out.

  Back in 2009, I watched from a treadmill in Generic Midwestern College Town as the news hit that an airplane had just crash-landed in the Hudson River. People were standing on the wings and boats were circling. Oh no! The Piglet and Decibel lived in New York City, and I hoped against hope that they were all right. My first thought was to go get my phone out of the locker room to check on them.

  No! I scolded myself. Of course they are okay. They weren’t on the plane and there is no sane scenario that puts either of them in the middle of the Hudson River for a plane to land on top of them.

  So I stayed put, sweat some more, and watched the news. I wondered if The Piglet and Decibel knew this was happening.

  I started to wonder if I should take a little break and call them, just to talk about it. They could be scared. My inner chopper pilot made a break for her battle station.

  No. Helicopter One, stand down, I repeat, stand down. Absolutely no missions will be flown today.

  I forced myself to finish the workout. By the time I did, I was calm and mentally relaxed. I hit the showers.

  While I was getting dressed, I pulled my cell phone out from my backpack and looked down to see a text message The Piglet had sent about two hours earlier:

  “Plane crashed into the Hudson. Decibel and I are fine.”

  After toweling the sarcasm off of my phone, I realized I am truly a dork.

  I don’t even remember what the breaking news bulletin at the gym where Dad dropped me off was about. My mind was elsewhere. Must not have been as important as my aspiring pilot with swine flu. But I do remember the lesson I learned from the landing on the Hudson. There’s only so much any parent can do from a distance, and much of it can be counterproductive.

  So even with a disease attacking my youngest, I needed to manage to offer encouragement, and a little bit of mommy lovin’, without falling back into dorkville. That’s not meddling, or chopper piloting; it’s simply remaining a mother even after The Spawn have grown.

  While driving back to the ranch with G-pa, my revelation continued. My dad, who in no way could have been considered a helicopter parent when I was a child, has really become a role model for me as a parent of adult kids. He only gives advice when I ask, he never butts his nose in where it doesn’t belong, and, rather than pointing out my faults, he lets me know how proud he is of my accomplishments.

  Admittedly, in my twenties I viewed my father’s philosophy as disinterest. Now, with a little age on me, I see its brilliance. As much as he may have wanted to meddle in my life to make himself feel better, he wisely stepped back and allowed me the privacy to work things out on my own.

  Over time, the gift of allowing me to grow into myself independently has only strengthened our relationship. We have grown into much more than a father and a daughter. We are friends who enjoy, cajole, needle, and respect each other. Even more, we are adult friends who love each other truly like family.

  We can now advise one another and value the advice without feeling trod upon, disagree but consider the arguments without malice or fear of hurting each other’s feelings, pontificate, listen, and laugh. A lot.

  Come to think of it, since I became an adult, each time I see my dad, we grow a little bit closer. It’s a relationship to aspire to with my newly full-grown Spawn.

  I may even adopt his signature tagline, the last thing he always says to me:

  “I love you, baby. Avoid evil.”

  17

  Home, Home on the Strange

  As serene as life in BAMF parked beside the barn at the Arkansas home­stead was, we still had a big bunch of kinfolk to drop in on and a long stretch of highway to get to them. The time had come to resume our travels.

  There was something that struck me when we got back out on the highway. Since embarking on our friends and family visitation voyage, signs had become a big part of our new life. While I navigated and David drove, the messages that whizzed by BAMF’s windshield provided a constant source of information and amusement. They proved useful for knowing where we were, how far we had to go, when we might find gas or food, and what highway to take, but on the back roads of the Ozarks, the signs took on a distinctively different flair. They announced all sorts of curiosities along the way.

  This one certainly caught our eye:

  WELCOME

  TO

  TOAD SUCK

  AR

  Or in case we were feeling hungry or hellbound, there was:

  SMOKIN’ HILLBILLY

  BBQ

  3MI AHEAD ON LEFT

  emblazoned on a sign that shared space with this message:

  YOUR RANSOM

  HAS BEEN PAID BY

  THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

  CHOOSE HIM NOW!

  Up the road a piece, we passed another sign:

  SNAKE WORLD

  EXHIBIT

  OPEN WEEKENDS

  OTHERWISE

  OPEN

  WHEN HOME

  CLOSED

  WHEN GONE

  Tough to argue with that logic.

  And every so often we were warned:

  CROOKED AND STEEP

  NEXT TWO MILES

  DRIVE WITH CARE

  The road certainly fit the description, and BAMF was laboring up the hills, but since this was the only way out from Dad’s place heading west, we forged ahead.

  By the time we crossed over into Oklahoma, we thought we’d about seen it all sign-wise. Nope, we’d barely scratched the surface. We were entering a whole ’nother dimension of billboard communication, the handwritten rural rant.

  About four miles outside of Perry, we came upon the Nemechek Farm. It would seem that David Nemechek has a bone to pick. For forty years, Mr. Nemechek has exerci
sed his freedom of speech in a most unusual way, erecting dozens of huge, eye-catching, almost pop art–styled signs protesting what he sees as a racial attack against his family and livestock. He is convinced that the fine folks of Noble County are out for some “ethnical cleansing,” through the “law discrimination” of his family and cattle.

  David (my David, not Mr. Nemechek) was nervous. He grew up in Kansas and was well aware that if we ventured onto private property, prairie folks might shoot first and ask questions later. He was of the opinion that, from the looks of the display, there was a good chance the sign painter had at least one screw loose.

  I could hardly wait to jump out and start snapping pics. But once outside of our vehicle, I immediately felt like I was being watched from the farmhouse, perhaps through the scope of a deer rifle. I gathered my guts and gained enough testicular fortitude to cross the highway and check out the peculiar display.

  The fascinating declarations were positioned haphazardly in the yard, with lines and letters in bright mismatched colors reminiscent of ransom notes hastily pasted together from magazine clippings. Some of the signs painstakingly laid out the dates and identifying numbers of the bovine victims, calling the perpetrators “bastards,” “evil inbred German religious terrorists,” and “liars.” None of them made a lick of sense to me. Perhaps not to Mr. Nemechek either, since he seemed to ask “WHY?” about a hundred times.

  WHY, YOU AND COM-

  MUNITY PROMOTING

  YOUR NAMES AND

  DIRTYING OUR NAME, WHY?

  And . . .

  WHY YOU DEVELOPED THIS KIND OF HATRED TOWARD US?

  WHY DOES CRIME PAY—IT DID HERE

  WE ARE THE VICTIMS

  “WHY” IS THIS A RACISM HATRED AREA?

  . . . . and on and on.

  Sadly, most of these uniquely American works of art were fading away in the harsh Oklahoma sun, falling victim to the elements of the windswept prairie. We were lucky to be able to see them up close, venturing to do so despite a gnawing fear that we would be made to pay dearly for our curiosity. But perhaps their creator had lost the fire in his belly, because no one opened fire on us.