Jul 14 2008
Naima the Nomad: Pt. Four
My husband is the kind of guy you kept an extra foldout futon around for just in case. He never had a car unless one was given to him, which has happened, and after a few months, he gave it back. He won’t work a job if it compromises his values, such as working for large chain stores or anyone who does business with long chain stores, or stores that sell long chains. Even if it means going into debt, staying on the foldout futons of friends, and relying on the nutritional value of Mission burritos. He contemplated joining a Zen monastery once, and went and stayed for a week, but couldn’t afford to stay the three months he would have liked because he had to figure out how to make money to pay off the debts he had accrued from not working.
When I first met him, he was working at an art center for room and board with a living stipend just enough to pay his monthly bills. There were vehicles he could borrow and all the beer he could drink while shucking peas or watching another artist’s slideshow on the second floor of the art center’s renovated bunker. For the most part, he never had to leave the center unless he was going into the city for a burrito and a gig.
After we’d been together for a few months or so, before pregnancy was a word ever uttered between us, he told me that he was afraid of having to support a family. Not because he didn’t think he could do it, but it was a fear that he had, something that was just there like a bad eighties pop song you hadn’t realized that you knew all the lyrics to.
At that point, we were still moving every few months looking for the ideal community, following even a whisper of opportunity, a rumor of good surf, and sometimes we’d work a job. I couldn’t imagine him supporting another dog even, though I had never asked him to. In retrospect, I can wonder about truths that we have assembled for ourselves based on the credence of memory, our reliance on vision, the least trustworthy of all the senses.
For instance, tonight my husband is trying to watch the sunset. East Coast sunsets are not the same as West Coast sunsets; they don’t occur over the water. But in Maine, when the temperature is below freezing, there are colors in sunsets that can’t be seen from say, the shore at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Blocking his view from the sidewalk where we are pulling our bundled baby along on an old fashioned wooden sled is a very large island summer house with lots of windows, turrets, columns, and lawn. Nothing like the summerhouse we are staying in—drafty, small, and lime green. He tries standing on his tiptoes to peer through the window and runs along the side of the house to see if he can get a view of the sun setting across the bay behind the much larger buildings “in town.” Exasperated, he stops in front of the porch while I trudge through the snow ahead of him wondering what the hell he is up to.
The wind is up and snow is falling steadily. I think about how we had planned to winter over in Baja and briefly curse myself for not making it happen. As if I could stop the rains that pitched us onto this small yet decisive island. I should know by now that I’m not the one pulling the strings. I can’t force aimless wandering in a southwesterly progression.
Our first night here, at a going away party for the woman we ended up renting a house from, we were asked what we were doing in Maine on the brink of winter. We wanted to say “leaving,” but from that first ferry ride over, something about the placement of islands on the bay, like looking up from a contour map to see the shape of mountains, I knew we were going to stay. She had offered us her house cheap and with all the wood we could burn and by that Sunday we had a pet-sitting job too. That’s what I mean when I said that this island is decisive. I should know by now, it’s been over a year of repeatedly learning that we’re not the ones in control. It’s the islands, it’s the rain clouds, it’s the sunsets, it’s our past.
My husband runs one more lap around the house like a busy little kid. Jumping up and down to catch a glimpse of something too high for him to see. Then he runs towards me sliding in the ice like a boy, smiling. He approaches and I can see him. He is a man now. A father a husband. The one who sits calmly with our daughter through each meal as she flings yogurt all over the wall as if she were Pollock. The one who is less afraid than I, who just holds her when she cries.
He explains about the sunset, how he was trying so hard to see it. He was so afraid that he would miss that little moment when the last sliver of it becomes the ocean/cloud/high rise that he didn’t realize he was searching for a concept, forcing his sight to witness a belief of what a sunset is. And it wasn’t until he stopped trying, caught his breath, looked aside, that he was able to see sunset in the silhouette of the frozen tree; to feel how shadows are sunsets and light in the naked branches is pink and orange and green. “It’s amazing how we just can’t see,” he said. How limited and limiting we are by knowledge.
When my father first found out I was pregnant, he was irate. No, that’s not true; he was about to walk the dog. He said, “If you’re happy, then I’m happy.” He hung up the phone and walked the dog. Then he called back later, not so happy: We didn’t have steady jobs, we didn’t have a house let alone a decent apartment for more than six months at a time. We weren’t married. We had debt. We had no idea what we were doing.
In my father-in-law’s words, we were “short on ducks.” He said, “Some people get all their ducks in a row first. The house, the job, the wife. But really, money and a house aren’t what you need to raise children. What you really need is energy.” He raised children without sleep. When my husband was little, he worked early mornings driving a garbage truck. Nights and weekends he gigged, playing music at bars and restaurants and festivals. He napped like a cat.
We learn about fathers from fathers. We learn mothering from mothers. Not just by what they say and do, but also by how they feel. My husband feels the exhaustion of fatherhood, the frustration of trying to support the family with something other than music, years before he finds himself in that situation. I feel my father’s love for me. I feel a father’s loss of control, the unexpressed grief over how time has passed. I don’t blame him for it. I feel it too.
The wooden sled we have was once used to push my husband in. It has a tall handle and metal blades. The paint on the wooden platform peeled off years ago. We brought it up from Rhode Island. That was a matter of months ago, and we’ve since been to every state in New England, traveled from California to Maine twice, dug our heels in the ground and forced our eyes open.
My daughter is bundled up in a gray union suit, a pink fleece onesie, a red snowsuit, and a green baby bag—a sleeping bag for babies that has legs. Her arms are inside the bag and we’ve cinched it tight around her so we have to sort of hack at her middle to bend her so she can sit up. Her hood is up over her hat and just her little face peers out and she’s slowly slipping down the sled so that she’s almost laying flat on her back on its platform. She doesn’t protest. She just looks at the stars. They shiver with cold, and soon she is sleeping indifferent to the route we take.