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

by David James

  After that, I learned to check for matches, lighters, flint, sharp sticks, charcoal, grills, grates, skewers, coat hangers, and long-handled forks, even if we were just going to the Kwik Sak for gas.

  So there’s been a bit of an adjustment from shopping for a pack of ravenous teenaged wolves to provisioning two middle-aged wandering gypsies. Even more so when the eating habits of said gypsies are completely different from one another.

  I like meat. Almost any meat. If it squeals, moos, gobbles, baas, swims, claws, or clucks, I’m all over it. Skin it, pluck it, shell it, or scale it, and lob it on the fire. Veronica calls herself a meat avoider—not an abstainer or a vegetarian, an avoider. As near as I can tell, that translates to let me try a bite of that pork chop, it looks way better than this salad.

  She claims that this is somehow my fault. The reason I never get a carnivorous dish to myself is because I make things look so good while I’m eating them. I can’t help it; I like food.

  But back to the point, it’s hard to find foods sized for just one or two people. Our days of the family pack side o’ beef are gone. I used to celebrate finding twenty-seven pounds of Grade A beef on sale for pennies a pound. Now I get to buy one strip steak for tonight’s dinner at $27.00 a pound. What a deal!

  I guess I could try breaking up the giant bargain packs and freezing the portions. But, Veronica’s bites as she avoids the stuff notwithstanding, how long would it take for me to go through a side of beef all by myself? Certainly longer than it takes frozen meat to turn into that strange crystallized cardboard space-food product it becomes in the freezer. Plus, half a cow would never fit in BAMF’s tiny refrigerator.

  On the bright side, even though bargains were no longer a part of my shopping agenda, the final bill was certainly less of a shock. Dozens of dollars instead of hundreds, I’ll take that and like it. But the transition from vats of spaghetti, cauldrons of soup, and Fred Flintstone slabs of meat to dinner-for-two was far from complete.

  The old habits of institutional-style meal preparation were not going down without a fight. Months into our empty nest existence, I still found myself making enough food for a small army. Leftovers became the staple of our diet. Time after time, I dug to the back of the fridge only to find some container filled with what looked to be an award-winning science fair project.

  I knew there were only two of us, and that Veronica hardly eats any of the same things I do—sneak attacks from her fork notwithstanding—but I had yet to complete the reprogramming of my cooking circuits.

  I decided to address this need to reboot as a challenge. A ­motivation to explore new culinary creations. Cooking for the brood generally wasn’t fun—there was a mundane quality to the fill-’em-up-and-send-them-on-their-way fare of our full nest days—but our new mobile empty nest had none of the limitations involved in family meal preparation. This new gypsy chef had the freedom to try ingredients and whip up dishes I never would have dreamed of plopping down in front of the kids. The seafood and produce sections of the supermarket became my playground. I found myself buying things like bok choy and tilapia.

  The freedom to experiment, combine interesting flavors, and incorporate Veronica’s tastes into my efforts ushered in a renewed joy of cooking. I enjoyed it again, not as a task, but as a recreation. Plus, I liked getting compliments. In fact, getting compliments to the chef from my wife became my Top Chef–type motivator.

  20

  The Blowup

  The next leg of our catch-up-with-everybody road trip would involve some serious mileage. Our last group of unvisited kin was my brother’s family and an extended group of beloved step-relatives in Southern California, half a continent away. The most direct route from Kansas would have been through the Desert Southwest, but it was summer and the temperature out there was hovering somewhere between pizza oven and the bowels of hell, so we figured a northern tack was in order.

  There were other incentives to take our modern-day covered wagon along that route—the fantastic sights of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Redwoods all beckoned—and since BAMF had decided not to kick the bucket on the initial chunk of our journey, we figured we’d seriously press our luck for a few thousand more miles. Do the old See the USA in Your Chevrolet thing. We could also cross a big item off of David’s bucket list: Oregon.

  David had managed to set foot in forty-nine of our fifty states during his days as a traveling troubadour. Oregon would be the last notch on his belt. He wanted to cross off the Beaver State in the worst way.

  But there was a storm a-brewin’ on the horizon, and it had all the earmarks of being a whopper. Looking back, I’m pretty sure our communications skills had taken a vacation when the nest emptied. We were so hell-bent on being deliriously happy that neither of us wanted to rock the boat by bringing up any irritating little things. By the time the inevitable blowup blew up, it just about blew the lid clean off.

  Anyone who has been married as long as we have can attest to the give-and-take necessary for harmonious cohabitation. And with kids involved, especially considering our very different approaches to parenting (David being the far-more-reasonable counterbalance to my hovering ways), we learned that if we were not communicating properly, things could go terribly awry.

  When we embarked on our new life as empty nesters, I guess we just stupidly assumed that we were in complete agreement on everything. After all, we did come up with this harebrained scheme together. We figured we had breezed right through the initial challenges that many empty nest couples encounter. It never occurred to us that we wouldn’t be on the same page when it came to how we wanted to travel.

  David has what I would consider a slightly less-than-healthy affinity for weird stuff. Get us within driving distance of the World’s Only, Largest, Tallest, or Deepest anything and you can’t keep him away. Because of this obsession, I’ve seen the World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well, the World’s Largest Rocking Chair, the World’s Only Corn Palace, the Only Home of Throwed Rolls, the Spam Museum, the Mustard Museum, the World’s Largest Hand-Tuned Windchimes, the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, a Perfectly Round Rock Worth Over $1,000, and a rock that looked kind of like a frog outside of the middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma (that one wasn’t valued, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t go for much on eBay). We almost died crossing a horrifying wood-planked hanging bridge to get to that stupid frog. David’s idea to counteract BAMF’s obvious overload on the structure’s questionable weight limit? Drive fast.

  Ginormous fiberglass things—oh my God—the man goes crazy for them. I’ve seen Abe Lincoln, the Jolly Green Giant, and a Paul Bunyan all standing over forty feet tall. I’ve stood inside the mouth of a 145-foot fish. That behemoth was billed as a “walk-thru fish one-half city block long, four and a half stories tall, hand-sculpted into the likeness of a leaping muskellunge.” I accompanied David on his pilgrimage to Sparta, Wisconsin—the mecca for formidable fiberglass figure fanatics—to see the infamous mold field of the F.A.S.T. Corporation, which stands for Fiberglass Animals, Shapes & Trademarks, and is where many of these monstrosities were born. David bounded through the acres of giant molds like a kid needing to pee on Christmas morning.

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m as delighted by a weird roadside diversion as the next guy. But couple David’s obsession with the fact that he will drive like a maniac to get there, see it as quickly as possible, and then move on to the next shiny object, and you have a very grumpy Veronica indeed. I call his style wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am traveling.

  The man also refuses to backtrack. He won’t turn around under any circumstances. I’m serious—if there was a ginormous diamond-­encrusted fiberglass platypus at the bottom of the World’s Deepest Hole and we inadvertently whizzed by it, that’s it. We missed it. I don’t get it, and it drives me nuts.

  I prefer to soak a place up. I had the notion that since we didn’t have set plans, we could find places we liked, sit a spell, meet people, listen to accents, chill. My belief is that a place is more than just the sum total of it
s attractions; it’s a living, breathing work in progress. I want to feel that, be a part of it.

  Our conflicted state of affairs came to a head in one of our nation’s greatest treasures, Yellowstone National Park.

  I was feeling grouchy on our third day at the park. Deservedly so. This sea level–raised gal had hiked the crap out of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone the day before—at high altitude, thank you very much. I’m worthless when oxygen deprived.

  My initiation into any sort of serious elevation came when I was eighteen, on my first visit to David’s parents’ funky little ranch house in the majestic Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado. The place clocks in at eighty-two hundred feet. There is literally no air.

  Spending the summers of his childhood at that altitude bestowed David with the lungs of a Sasquatch, so he doesn’t notice the thin air. As a teenager, he logged many an hour backpacking in the mountain wilderness. Interesting conversations crop up amongst teenaged boys when they’re out in the woods for weeks at a time, commonly ­opening with hormone-infused gems like, “What would you do if Farrah Fawcett came down the trail right now?”

  After a few days, the crack of dawn wasn’t safe in their presence.

  David must have kept this unfulfilled wilderness love fantasy alive over the years, because on the first evening we arrived at his folks’ place, he suggested we go for a little hike. Being young and ignorant in the ways of altitude sickness, I didn’t hesitate to charge the mountain. Huffing and puffing—and stubborn and competitive—I wasn’t about to show weakness. On top of a stunning, sunset-lit bluff, David made his move. I turned into his embrace and promptly threw up all over his boots.

  Yellowstone is not quite pukingly high, but a brisk bike ride through the geyser portion of the park on day one had me realizing that a few days at a base camp would have been a good idea before attempting to hike the canyon. But in the throes of not wanting to rock the empty nest jubilation, I stupidly kept my mouth shut and proceeded into the gorge. I had hopes of it being deep enough to afford me a few extra molecules of oxygen. If it was, the difference was not something my air-starved brain was capable of noticing.

  Day three dawned early as “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” David was up and ready to go buffalo hunting. I dragged my sore, altitude-­addled self out of BAMF’s loft, determined to be a good sport. I, too, really wanted to see a buffalo. We mounted our beat-up bikes—they had been hanging for thousands of dusty miles on the back of BAMF—and headed to the area of the park we deemed most likely for a sighting. I was dying. My oxygen-deprived muscles were screaming at me to cease and desist.

  After huffing and puffing for about five miles, we turned a corner and were warned by an oncoming cyclist, in a very British singsongy voice, to “Mind the bison!” She sounded exactly like Mary Poppins.

  Rather than heeding these considerate words of warning, I opted to focus on the humor of the phrase itself. One look at David’s shaking shoulders as he pulled ahead and I knew the cyclist’s warning had tickled him just as much. I summoned my waning strength and caught up to him to go in for the kill. With my last ounce of energy I yelled in a horrific English accent:

  “Mind the bison!”

  That did it. We were both laughing hysterically as we came out of the curve and found ourselves nose-to-nose with an enormous buffalo. Nothing like two thousand pounds of matted, ratty fur and giant horns to put a halt to the jocularity. We slammed on the brakes and hoped against hope that he was a nice buffalo. One that didn’t mind the high-pitched squeal of our beat-up bicycles stopping in the nick of time. Pushing backwards up on our tip-toes—too afraid to dismount—we eased away from our hulking new friend.

  “Crap, there’s millions of them,” whispered David, his eyes darting around in his very still head.

  Looking around, I noted two things. There were indeed quite a lot of buffalo, and in the middle of the herd there was an ambulance. The rangers ride around in ambulances? I supposed it must save time. Certainly if I survived this buffalo attack I would be in need of immediate medical attention for the heart attack I felt coming on.

  The tiptoeing was working. Step by tiny step we distanced ourselves from the critters. When we had retreated enough that we no longer felt hot buffalo breath on our faces, David said, “What kind of warning was that? ‘Mind the bison!’ How is there anyone left alive in England?”

  Normally I would have found the remark hysterical. Instead, I lost it. Poor David didn’t know what hit him.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so hell-bent on killing me, you could watch where you were going!”

  “What?” He looked genuinely confused. “Where did that come from?”

  Perhaps I should have calmed down and talked to him rationally. Nah.

  “All we do is race full bore at everything! I don’t even have time to breathe! You have got to slow down!” I yelled at the top of my nearly collapsed lungs. “Then you have the balls to blame that nice Mary Poppins lady for almost killing us? She was just trying to help!”

  David just stared at me. He had avoided a collision with a large hairy mammal, only to plow straight into a hysterical wife. I saw his confusion and could have stopped and ended the tiff right there.

  But then he said, “Ohhhhhh. So this is why you’ve been so passive-­aggressive lately.”

  Now that pissed me off. He might as well have asked me if I was PMSing. I wasn’t even sure what he meant, but it couldn’t have been a good thing.

  I got right in his face and hissed through clinched teeth, “What?” Then let fly at full volume, “What do you mean passive-aggressive?” followed by a syrupy-sweet sarcastic, “How am I passive-aggressive?”

  Oh.

  David fired back with a list of his own pent-up grievances. “Every time we try to do something, you stall as long as possible. I work it out so we can do stuff and have enough time to see everything, and you’re never ready. You act like you have no idea that we’re going to be somewhere until we get there. Then it’s ‘just a minute’ or ‘I have to change’ or ‘I want to put on makeup’ or ‘I need to make a phone call,’ or whatever.”

  Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that. Though I couldn’t agree that I was being purposefully belligerent, I could see his point. But I wasn’t ready to give up the arguing. So I spent a couple of days toggling between petulance, pouting, and provoking. Yeah, a bit passive-aggressive.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was nothing going on in our lives that merited getting all worked up. Certainly this wasn’t worth hurting each other over.

  I suppose nothing ever was. Were any of the reasons for our spats through the years really worth all the anger? I don’t think so now, but that’s easy to say with twenty-twenty hindsight.

  No doubt we were both more volatile back in our younger days. My darling husband was a yeller, but I was a thrower. At one point I think the Dodgers were scouting me. Shoes, cups, books, or whatever I could get my hands on was gonna get airborne when I got pissed off. Good thing David was a dodger. One time I hurled an alarm clock his way by spinning it around by its cord and launching it slingshot style. Talk about a helicopter mom.

  Those outbursts aside, we tried throughout our married life to avoid losing sight of the big picture and remember why we got married in the first place. We made an effort to find time for kid-less escapes now and then, even if just for a night or two, and talked. Sounds simple, but I know a whole lot of couples who just don’t talk to one another about meaningful stuff.

  Then they find when the chicks have flown the nest that they don’t have anything in common anymore. After spending decades of living for work and the kids, they have lost track of what attracted them to each other in the first place.

  We were determined not to have that happen to us, so we revisited the system that had worked so well for us over the years. We discussed our conflicting traveling philosophies in a reasonable fashion, returning to the sanity of actually talking things out instead
of shouting grievances at each other.

  David was already aware of his penchant for pressing forward faster than a free-spirited gypsy-type empty nester should, and he was working on it. I had to admit that, intentionally or not, I could see how never being ready until the last second might become annoying.

  I guess it wouldn’t kill me to put my shoes on before we stop somewhere.

  21

  THE Talk

  Our little refresher course in communication skills did us good. Neither one of us is a skilled mind reader, so we need a good grievance airing from time to time.

  Child rearing certainly helped us learn this lesson. It’s why Veronica and I are a much better couple now than twenty years ago. The only way to know what’s on someone’s mind is to talk to them. Ask, don’t guess. Relating to our kids as they got older played a big part in our grasping this.

  We always tried to treat our kids like people, individuals. They were allowed to have their own ideas and thoughts. This might be due to our boomer backlash from the children should be seen and not heard theory of prior generations.

  For instance, my mother would bristle when we asked our kids what they wanted for dinner. I’m not talking short-order cook stuff (ask for anything on the menu and everyone gets whatever they want), just a couple of choices that we would put to a casual vote. Chicken or spaghetti, guys? Winner take all. Mom thought that was way out of line.

  Back when I was a kid, we all sat down together, got what was served, and liked it. Period. We were card-carrying members of the Clean Plate Club. There were starving children in China, after all.