San juan Islands 

Dining in Corsica 

My Gypsy Life

My life as a Gypsy

“I always wanted Harriet Nelson as a mother, instead I got a gypsy.” My older son long lamented.

Gypsy: one inclined to a nomadic, unconventional way of life.

Yet they are also a group that preserves a traditional way of life. It fit, or has grown to fit more comfortable through the years. I am a mover, a wanderer, a traveler, and also a mom, a teacher, a nurse, a person who loves tradition and sentiments. For example, I have long bought Christmas decorations on my travels and I carry these with me from place to place. Although nomadic by nature, this gypsy does not travel light.
My gypsy wandering ways, grew rampant late in my 20’s and has defined, invented, challenged and bankrupted me since. It has limited me and expanded me simultaneously. It has given me love, and hindered commitment.
I am the only person I know with a closet full of travel bags, a walk in closet at that. (I bought a computer bag before I bought the laptop. Thank God it is the only thing I am anal about.) Perhaps I just really wanted a well-furnished caravan.
Phoned for a flight time change I responded, “Which one?” as I dug through the pile of plane and train tickets by my bedside.
My best friend from age 6 gave me a pin that reads ‘Restless.’ Even without the label, it is obvious. Even my skirt flowing behind me as I once again leave, evokes the swirl and sweep of a gypsy dancer. Perhaps my restlessness revolved from an early miserable marriage and of being part of that first era of women who had choices beyond parenthood. Like others from that time I was drunk with freedom, and sorely regret the damage to myself and to my sons for not being able to see all that I had right at home.
My legacy now, 2 homes where I don’t live (France and Mexico), and 2 sons, one a stay at home, hates anything foreign one (Give me Harriet Nelson please!) and the other who went on an around the world just prior to 9/11 (and who’s life was saved by George Harrison in Katmandu after the royal family murder and Mao riots.)
Growing up in the Midwest, people seldom moved out of their neighborhoods, travel overseas was unheard of, Hawaii was about as exotic as one got.
I likely caught the travel ‘disease’ from my best friend in high school. As a teacher she traveled every continent except Antarctica, taught in Japan and. Bolivia, summered in Hawaii with a non-English speaking family.
I was a poverty ridden single mother with an abusive x-husband. My most colorful travel was sleeping in the back seat of a cross-country trip with showers in Vegas’s gas stations. That changed on a life-changing trip to Europe. I became a teacher, like my friend Cathy, and I had 10 weeks off to explore Europe.
A sociopath who drugged tourists in Paris robbed me on my second day. Not trusting the hotel, (big mistake. 20 years later I can guarantee the honesty of most foreign hotels, if not, try the safe.) I wore one of those bulky money belts. ‘Safely’ tied to a café table leg, I lost everything; money, plane tickets, credit cards, even metro tickets. Suffice to say I spent the night wandering the streets trying to return to the hotel, met in the morning with abusive police, and frantically spent my vacation replacing documents.
And strangely it started my love affair with traveling, and especially France.
And although I don’t recommend it, there is no way to learn a place so intimately as to wander its’ streets fearful and desperate. In an ongoing struggle I began to learn the dichotomy between helplessness and knowledge. I also was ‘rescued’ by restaurant workers, who have become life-long friends. Their kindnesses have remained with me much longer then the meanness of my thief.

Why does the struggle bring such satisfaction? And not just big things like being robbed or managing transportation in a foreign country but finding the light switch or toilet flusher. I still laugh at my faux paux of telling the man “Oh yes I am very very pretty” when I had thought that I was saying that I was jolly. Or telling the gorgeous Italian man with a smile “Oh yes basta.” Which means stop; go away, the last thing that I wished him to do.

And the wonders of opening up to others in strange places in ways one doesn’t always at home.
And of course falling in love, In a Paris café, Franck left a note reading “If you want too walk by the moon baby sweet. Give you’re your ring numero.” Along with a kir and flowers. Our decade long relationship was so torrid people along Rue Andres des Arts still refer to it. Yet it kept us from truly committing to others, between steamy visits to Paris. The San Francisco earthquake and the death of Francks father led to a marriage proposal and Franck’s arrival in San Francisco. Many thrown dictionaries later he returned heart broken to Paris. Foolishly I didn’t allow time for the realities of close-by adjustment of cultures and language. I often wonder where he is.
The pulling of a wisdom tooth and the overdose from the doc’s sodium pentathol (my tiny jazz dance body was draped in protection for the record 50 below chill giving the dentist the impression that I weighed more when he determined the dose.) I received a call for a job interview in Carmel, California on Xmas eve and found my 2 young sons and myself in an Uhaul on New Years. After 8 heavenly years I found it too early for heaven and headed for San Francisco. Finding life too hectic there, especially with kids, we left shortly after the Franck fiasco.
I returned to my ‘roots’ in Minneapolis and realized why I had left in the first place. I headed back to the west coast, with California, Oregon and Washington nursing licenses in my wallet. (My sons had already returned to California.) Heading out into the Minnesota fog my first view was of a Greyhound bus whose sign read Seattle. And so I followed. I have since moved 6 times in the same number of years.

Barely arrived in Seattle, jobless and poor, I managed to go on a Boudin camel caravan in Morocco, a lifelong dream since my high school reading of Michener’s Caravan. My restlessness was an undercurrent that hid deep inside me simmering, during my years as a single mother.

I wonder about this restlessness, this gypsy spirit, is there a pioneer relative whose genes are locked in mine? My family can think of no one, but then all families have secrets. What caused me even as a little girl to be haunted by the Gale Storm song, The Wayward Wind? What I do know is that my adult friends have caught the travel fever from me, and I have friends who had never been out of the state, who have wandered around the world and bought homes abroad, they say from my influence.” You have ruined me from a normal life. I always am ready for the big breakup so that I can take off again.” Complains Tim. “Taking off to worlds unknown not only seems possible but plausible, after watching you.” Says Mai.
Travel remains a fabulous remedy for the stresses of life as a Harborview nurse. And I still find myself meeting more people in a day out of town then any night out at home. Am I open to more risk, willing to give the stranger a smile?
I was heading to the PNB to see Romeo and Juliet as I wrote this. I looked over to see a longhaired musician type watching me. He too was heading to the ballet.
Just as he offered me a glass of champagne my dear friends Mark and Alice walked up. Mark was recently treated for cancer and this was the first time I had seen him. His illness was frightenly apparent. Underweight and stiff he looked like a statue. Stunned, I found myself turning from the musician. Foolishly I didn’t invite him to join us. I was caught in the presence and worries of my reality and friendships here at home.
And that is how it is. At home we have responsibilities that do not exist so obviously far away. So travel remains a growing experience, but also an escape, a distraction. Yet I miss the intensity of bring in each moment when I travel. And I think of that longhaired musician and realize, ‘Kenny’, I am going to start ‘traveling’ while home in Seattle.
Or perhaps this gypsy is ready to settle down. Hey, I even bought a condo, and it is even in the city and country where I live.