4. The Nomad's Root

Never Say Never…

My dad had a heart attack every year of my life. I was aware of them but not of their dangers. I accepted them as normal. After each, he would end up in ICU. Kids in those days were not allowed to visit so he devised another way for me to visit. I would wear our mutually favorite dress. A brown plaid pinafore dress that tied in the back and hung on me neatly. The pinafore was loaded with all kinds of different buttons and golden stitching that spelled out, “Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button?”

I don’t remember exactly how they got me in there. I remember it being very quiet or being told to be quiet as we slipped along the halls, myself tucked inside the overcoat of my father’s accomplice.

I would sit on his bed and we chatted away. He shared with me many things that I don’t even know he shared with my mother. Spoke candidly of our relatives, associates, and friends. His children. His hopes, his dreams, his fears. I knew it all. I was his favorite and paid the price. Well worth it.

It had only been a couple of months since he decided to move the family to California, my 6th birthday came and 2 weeks later he was gone.

My childhood ended.

At six in a nano second flash I journeyed from childhood to full adulthood.

Moving from a 24000 square foot house into 1000 square foot apartment did not phase me in the slightest, becoming a latch key kid did. There was no more Elizabeth greeting me after school with cookies and milk. Instead I'd find a cold door with no response after a hard day at school. With my back to the door, I'd slide down to sit, routinely falling asleep until someone made their way home and let me in until the day I was given my own key and my days as a latch key kid began.

Then a ray of hope...

At dinner one evening, my mom suddenly announces, “We’re moving to Switzerland. I have rented a chalet, found schools for the two of you and we are going to start a new life!”

I was thrilled. “That sounds great!”

The sibling on the other hand was distraught. Her face grew red and her fork fell from her hand and hit the edge of the plate chipping my mom’s favorite pattern. “Mother, I have two years of high school left! I can’t move to some stupid foreign country and miss my last years! Are you crazy? I won’t go!”

My mom turned pale. “This is an opportunity of a lifetime. You’ll learn 3 or 4 different languages, meet new people, make new friends, and discover a different culture.”

“No! Mother I won’t go.” My sibling screamed and left the table. The bedroom door slammed shut.

My mom was upset. She wanted to get out of America and try something new. The money Poppy left would go 10 times as far abroad and she thought it would be good for all of us. I could see her eyes getting red around the rims and I went over and hugged her.

“It’ll be ok mom.” I said sheepishly, willing back my own tears.

She hugged me back and whispered unconvincingly, “Of course.”

Switzerland didn’t come up again. Instead she went on an annual buying binge of moving house with little time between the next search of the house she sought. Some people binge eat when unhappy, my mom binge moved.

The sibling finished high school and then decided to go to university in the city and live at home. Any thoughts my mom and I had of the two of us moving out of the country soon drew dry like the washes that snake through Arizona after a monsoon flash flood dissipates.

Rare was the time my mom, hereafter referred to as Jackie, as that is what I called her throughout, would not cave to one or the other sibling's demands. They were exceptional extortionists, she the willingly extorted. A woman of her generation more used to being told what to do, think and behave had never embraced her independence, her independent means to do whatever she liked, afraid to think outside the box until she got a taste, that was to come, of the freedom that came with traveling solely.