Going Gypsy

by David James

  The combination of Roomie’s drug and alcohol problems and my immaturity—and inability to object to the goings-on lest I be labeled uncool—led to some pretty crazy situations. Many a morning I woke up to Roomie tiptoeing into my bedroom to ask me if I remembered the name of the guy sleeping in her bed. I’d have to groggily stumble out into the living room to see who was left. From the headcount I could usually decipher who Roomie’s Mr. Lucky must have been. I might have been drifting, but I knew this was not the sort of life I wanted to be living.

  I was getting pretty adept at learning what not to do by example. But I didn’t have any examples of what to do—wholesome role models were in short supply, and I wasn’t exactly seeking them out. The only certainty was that I didn’t want to have kids. I was sure I didn’t have the tools to raise them properly—I’d just screw them up.

  Running away changed that. It took David and me a few days to get to Nashville, a year to be married, and two years for me to get pregnant. The wild child who was never going to have kids got herself knocked up. And I couldn’t have been more elated.

  A protective, procreating new me was born; nesty, earth-motherly—and fearful. I worried about everything. What if I ate something that was poisonous to the baby? What if I chose the wrong birthing process? What if I couldn’t lactate? The list was endless.

  Whilst incubating, I spent hours preparing what passed for a nursery, a sunny little nook off the living room of our rented duplex. I learned three chords on the guitar so I could hold the instrument against my belly and play music (or something akin to music) to the baby. I memorized every parenting book I could get my hands on. I was pigheadedly determined to be the best mother since the Virgin Mary.

  The Piglet changed my world. Her little red wrinkly face was the most amazing thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. I couldn’t stop looking at her. But mostly I was relieved that my diet of watermelon and instant mashed potatoes, the only foods I could hold down while I carried her, had nourished her just fine.

  Two years later, when The Piglet’s sister, Decibel, arrived, the What Ifs continued to badger me. Decibel came screaming into the world at full volume, and yet I worried. And when The Boy made his quiet appearance, even with two priors under my belt, I had endless questions.

  What if The Piglet never learned to tie her shoes? What if The Boy sneaked out of the house and got into real trouble? What if Decibel ran off with a musician? What if that musician was a drummer?

  The more I worried, the more I hovered. After all, I was fully aware, firsthand, of all the trouble The Spawn could get into.

  The boxes continued to nag me as I made a diagram detailing the location of each item I packed.

  “You have no plans!”

  It appeared that the boxes were also aware that I was the embodiment of preparedness. Even though our plan as GypsyNesters was no plans, the boxes’ statement was thought-provoking. Stupid boxes, making me think about stuff.

  It is true that I am, deep down to my core, a planner. Years ago I came across a poem my mother wrote that beautifully, and truthfully, described me. It spoke of a child who looked so forward to upcoming events, meticulously preparing for every moment, that when the big day arrived she was always let down. It was high time that kid was sent to her room without supper.

  However, I firmly believe this propensity for planning served me well in the parenting department. I made lists, charts, and schematic diagrams to keep track of ballet rehearsals, baseball games, concert practices, and flying lessons. I would scotch-tape the kids’ schedule to the glove compartment of our minivan, which we unlovingly referred to as The Whore of Babylon (our affinity for naming vehicles had endured).

  She was bright red like a harlot and signified our true entry into the world of Keeping up with the Joneses, which made us feel a little like, well, prostitutes. Constantly in the shop, she screwed us out of money at every turn. David hated her in an epic, almost biblical kind of way.

  I would tool around in The Whore checking seatbelts, handing out snacks, asking about schoolwork, keeping Decibel’s feet off of The Piglet’s “side”—oh, and driving. I must have put a million miles on her as I planned and planned and planned.

  But the time has come, dear boxes, for the obsessive planning to end. The plan is for you to be in storage—no matter how much you whine, plead, or intimidate.

  “What about our precious cargo?” they asked as I Bubble-Wrapped the living crap out of an heirloom teacup. “Don’t you care about anything anymore?”

  This answer was easy. The stuff in the boxes had been gathering dust on shelves or buried in drawers for quite some time. Not exactly daily-use-type stuff. This was the history of us, my husband and our children, our parents and grandparents, mementos of lives lived. No one in our family was at a point where Memory Lane was a street in their city, much less their neighborhood. And David and I certainly weren’t going to live there.

  I’ll revisit Memory Lane when I’m really old, surrounded once again by these mocking boxes, a crotchety old lady with too many stories to tell, willing to unleash them onto anyone who will listen.

  I also know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the photo albums, Grandma’s china, and the books that I treasured as a child remain precious. Someday, perhaps one of my daughters, a grandson, or a curious anthropologist will cherish my keepsakes too.

  But for now, you sixteen boxes, it’s time for you to shut up and keep my memories safe in the dark, cool recesses of a storage building.

  6

  Empty Nest Egg

  When The Boy and I returned from Generic Midwestern Directional University, it hit me that Veronica and I only had a couple of months to pull off this Going Gypsy business. The biggest trick would be in the timing. All we had to do was quit our jobs, sell our current place, close on it, move out, send all of our stuff north on a boat, and then get there before it was delivered. What could possibly go wrong?

  Veronica had already jumped in with both feet on the packing front. Good thing too, because from prior experience we learned that for me packing means endless hours of debate as I decide the ultimate fate of each letter, knickknack, photo, postcard, thank-you note, shoestring, paper scrap, LP, forty-five, cassette tape, or eight-track that I had saved for no apparent reason.

  Within a couple of days we’d given notice at our jobs. Veronica’s employment had a built-in ending point, the close of the school year, but she had agreed to stay on a few weeks longer to get things in order, help with the transition, and show the new guy the ropes.

  My work situation was even easier to disentangle. Other than my periodic tours overseas, I performed at various beach bars and night spots around the island. Just me and my guitar. At first it had been a welcome respite from Nashville’s corporate music business and the soap opera entanglements that come with being in a band. But after eight years, I was ready to disengage even more.

  I also did the afternoon slot on a local radio station. It was fun. I got paid to play music that I liked and babble on the air about songs and artists. But it was always kind of a lark for me, something I knew was temporary.

  So I told the station manager about our gypsy scheme, played a few farewell shows at some of my favorite haunts, and that was that. We were both officially unemployed.

  In the meantime, one phone call and a quick meeting had our house on the market. We were all in. No turning back. Our future had uncertainties galore, but one thing was certain: our offspring would not be returning to live in their old bedrooms.

  Good, we thought. We had learned about the phenomenon of adult children returning to the nest from The Piglet on her final visit home before earning her university degree.

  We got to talking about her plans. She had some options, chief among them a job offer in DC, where she had been going to college, or taking a big chance and moving to New York to go for it in the concrete jungle.

  “Do you know anyone in New York other than your sister?” Veronica was worried about The Piglet m
aking a go of it in the Big Bad Dangerous Apple. “Are any of your friends moving there too?”

  “I know a couple of people from my internship, but a lot of people in my class are moving back in with their parents after graduation.” There wasn’t even a tiny hint of jealousy in her reply. Simply put, she was appalled. “I can’t believe they’re not dying to get out and start their own lives.”

  This was our introduction to the idea of Boomerang Kids. The concept was completely foreign to us. Why would any young adult want to do this? The Piglet supplied the answer in her best snooty, sarcastic voice.

  “They don’t feel like they can afford to live in the style to which they have become accustomed.”

  I could hardly believe my ears.

  “They’re not supposed to!”

  Where did prior generations live when they were first starting out on their own? Generally not the Taj Mahal. Veronica and I started out in a one bedroom converted screened-in porch that had all the weatherproofing of the average wiffle ball. It was a veritable private zoo of urban vermin, and we were thrilled to have it. We were proud and happy to be self-sufficient.

  Accidentally smacking my head on the five-foot-high kitchen ceiling/stairwell overhang a few hundred times made me really appreciate our eventual move up to bigger digs. We rejoiced in every improvement of our living conditions through the years because we had worked for it. We moved into a real apartment, then a duplex, until we finally saved up enough to make the down payment for an assumed loan on an about-to-be-repossessed starter home.

  The place was a cat pee–saturated disaster, but we worked like crazy on that funky little domicile until it was quite livable, and we tasted the pride of ownership along the way. Who were we to deny our offspring those same pleasures?

  There was also a huge financial upside to this process. During the eleven years we occupied our starter home, we established credit, refinanced it to a conventional loan at a much lower rate, built up thousands of dollars in equity, and sold it at a substantial profit. We had stashed away a tidy little sum of money without even thinking about it. None of this would have been possible had we spent our twenties and thirties living with mommy and daddy.

  Once The Piglet pointed it out, we noticed the boomerang effect all around us. I sometimes wonder who is more responsible for this sort of behavior—the kids or the parents. For the adult offspring, a free room in the old childhood house, home-cooked meals, no bills, their old familiar bed, and hanging out in the old high school stomping grounds might seem too good to pass up.

  As for the parents, I can only surmise that a good number of folks who have Boomerang Kids actually want them to stay at home. Consciously or unconsciously, I think they are unable, or afraid, to give up their role as parents. They are as unwilling to move on to the next phase of their lives as their offspring are. Most tell themselves that they are helping their kids. But does making things easier really help? Does enabling these fledgling adults to hang around the nest and encouraging them to postpone real life do them any good? I think not.

  So we wouldn’t be taking any chances when it came to The Spawn boomeranging. No Australian hunting stick would be knocking us on the noggin. There would be no nest to bounce back to.

  Ever since that funky first place, we faithfully poured money into our homes until our soon-to-be-empty nest had become a tidy nest egg. Why not sell it and use the profit to reinvest and live a little?

  Back up in the great Midwest, Smiley WideTie had worked it out so that we could close on our new college town condo long-distance. Utilizing FedEx, fax machines, phones, email, and the occasional carrier pigeon, we managed to buy a property without ever getting within two thousand miles of the previous owner. Ain’t technology grand? So, Step One complete. At least we had a place to send our boxes.

  Seeing that we were serious about this idea of ours, Mr. WideTie was ready to loosen his neckwear and find us some deals. He called every few days with news about other available properties in the same condominium complex. Having all of the properties in the same place was important to us. That way we would only have to deal with one management and maintenance company.

  I told Smiley that we would take a look as soon as we got back up there. What I didn’t say was that there wasn’t going to be any more buying going on unless we sold our island home.

  We were starting to stress out a mite. Should we lower the price? Try to rent it out? Our jobs were ending soon, The Boy had to get to GMDU, and I had booked a late summer concert tour in Italy as a jump start to our gypsy lifestyle. Worst-case scenarios were beginning to run through my mind.

  I couldn’t book the airline tickets for the tour. Where would we fly out of? Where would we fly back to? What if we were in Europe when the house sold? Well, we already knew how to close a sale long-distance, but from Italy? I thought about the house sitting empty through the upcoming hurricane season with no one there to batten down the hatches, and coming back to a pile of rubble. Doubt was nipping at the edges of my mind.

  Then a ray of hope came shining through. Our St. Croix realtor called to let us know that a couple was flying down from the States specifically to look at our house. We cleaned like maniacs and made plans to be out of the way for the Saturday showing.

  Sure enough, they made an offer, a good offer, and we took it. They wanted to move in right away, so all of a sudden we had a new problem. We had no place to live for the next few weeks while Veronica finished out her stint at the school. All in all, it was a much better problem to have.

  The next week, as we were moving into a one-month rental, The Boy and I carted sixteen seventy-pound boxes to the post office. Seventy pounds was not just some random choice, as if I thought, Gee, I can lift seventy pounds without needing immediate emergency back surgery, so let’s stop there. It’s the maximum that the post office will allow. Here’s something we learned: there’s nothing a postal worker likes more than a large assemblage of boxes, right at that maximum allowable weight limit, showing up about a half hour before closing time. After this, I doubt we could even mail a postcard from the St. Croix Post Office without them going postal on us. Good thing we were leaving.

  With two weeks to spare before The Boy’s first day of school, we temporarily plopped down in his Generic Midwestern College Town. We didn’t beat the boxes though. They were waiting for us at the post office, with a whole new crew of postal workers ready to go postal.

  Within a few days Smiley had shown us several condos, and we snagged a couple that were priced right and ready to rent. With the fall semester just days away, we had student tenants in them both in no time flat. Suddenly we were landlords. One more acquisition and our real estate empire would be complete.

  “Why is this one so cheap?” I asked, looking through the latest WideTie & Associates listings.

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it yet, but it probably needs a little work. Let’s take a look at it.”

  “A little work” turned out to be the understatement of the century. We walked in and found a thin film of an unidentified orange substance coating the entire ground floor. What was this stuff? It thickened as we approached the kitchen. The source must have been in there somewhere.

  “It’s grease!” Veronica cried out, fighting back the urge to blow chunks all over the mind-numbingly disgusting, grease-soaked carpet on the kitchen floor.

  “Oh my God, they carpeted the kitchen?” I added, not helping.

  The grease was literally squishing up in little bubbles around our feet as we stepped gingerly on the rug. The source was on the stove, but not a part of the stove. It appeared that the stove had not been functional for some time. In fact, the source looked to be the only functioning appliance in the entire place, a FryDaddy Deep Fryer. Well, if you can’t stand the grease, get out of the kitchen. Heeding that paraphrase of an age-old adage, we slogged our way over to the stairs to check out the second floor.

  Smiley was not so smiley right about now. He stayed in the front room looki
ng thoroughly disgusted, trying desperately not to come into contact with anything. His tie was perfect.

  “How’s it look up there?” he called after us.

  “At least the walls aren’t coated with the orange greasy film,” I proclaimed.

  Veronica gave my arm a tug and pointed, “The carpet is horrible in this bedroom, and they’ve torn it clear out of the other one.”

  “Saves us the trouble,” I replied. “Let’s check the bathroom.”

  “Unbelievable,” we said in perfect unison.

  It was the only word that would enter any normal human’s brain at the sight. No need to inspect it further. It was a total loss. We shut the door and retreated back downstairs.

  Veronica bounced up to Smiley with, “We love it!”

  I threw in, “A bargain at any price.”

  Our jocularity and sarcasm seemed to puzzle him a bit, as Mr. Wide-Tie was still clearly disturbed by the overall gross factor of the place. He remained all business. So when we offered under three-quarters of the asking price, we made sure it was clear that we weren’t kidding. Straight faces all around.

  Once he cracked his namesake smile, Veronica nudged me and whispered, “His socks match his tie.”

  7

  Fear Conquering and Writing a Will

  I have to admit that some of the humor in our escapades was a defense mechanism. Obviously, in the union of David and myself, I am by far the less fearless. For me, selling the nest and heading out into the big wide world was stepping way outside of my comfort zone. The whopper of a panic attack I had right before we left St. Croix gave a strong indication of my state of mind.

  The overload of tying up the loose ends at work, long-distance real estate transactions, last-minute college-mom duties, and emotional farewell dinners with our friends tripped my circuit breakers. I had gotten the boxes to shut up, but wasn’t capable of quieting my brain.