Even the Bedouin took a break from their wanderings to set down their sourdough starters, tether their camels, and plant a vegetable or two, right? Or did they just forage and herd, milk and slaughter, become experts at nursing on the go? And then there is me, a nomad long before I even dreamt the sound, “Nigh-eem-aah,” which my husband then composed for me, a name. It reminds me of the Zen koan, “What did your face look like before your parents were born?”

I like to think I blew across the plains of Mongolia, like a seed that has transplanted itself to a different continent, only to leave scientists wondering decades later about the original surface of the earth. Then I took a plane to California, with the desire to wander inscribed upon me, to become a modern day nomad, a professional petcare provider. And here I am now in Maine, the sheer number of dogs on this ferry reminding me of previous lives: herding dogs through the regional parks, every week a different house, a different garbage day, a new mailman to protect, colliding into my husband—dogless and shirtless, on a headland near the Golden Gate bridge, setting into motion our couch-surfing adventures and the startling birth of Naima, our nomad.

There are times when I can’t stop seeing what we have chosen in the shadow of what we have rejected. I admit that on the road I have complained of the things I cannot do or have: yoga classes, acupuncture, childcare, haircuts. On the deck across from me, a well-coiffed woman adjusts the blanket on her bundled baby snoozing in its off-road stroller. Behind her, islands and lighthouses pass by. We are on our way to a cabin on an island to visit my husband’s sculptor friend from graduate school. My daughter wants to throw herself overboard. My husband wants a beer and all I do is wonder, “Is that woman’s baby on a nap schedule? Has she weaned? Does she work, have childcare, go to the gym? And if so, has that made the adjustment to motherhood smoother?”

In previous entries I have complained of isolation. When we announced that we were leaving the Bay Area to travel around in the van, people asked us why we’d want to isolate ourselves like that? Didn’t we want to be around family and friends? But since we have left, we find just how we are part of an often unlikely pack of people. We have learned this because on the road—jobless, broke, and frequently lost—we are more obviously vulnerable and dependent on others, and opening ourselves to whomever will find time for us. Or, maybe we already knew this—with the birth of our daughter came a re-startling, by the existence of stars, bright things that wink at fear, by the sky in each other’s expressions reminding us to pay intimate attention to what has been before us.

We broke down on the Mass pike coming out of New York one morning before we had had our coffee. There was a loud “kachunk” sound and then a whapping noise as something broke off and flew down the highway. We coasted into a rest stop, and I nursed the screaming baby while my husband went in to the McDonald’s/Cinnabon/Dunkin’ Donuts to check things out. He came out excited and I thought perhaps he had recruited a trucker to fix our one-ton diesel.

“McDonald’s serves organic Green Mountain coffee!” he yelled and I cheered. A red-headed freckled woman, with a boy younger than Naima with a growth on the side of his head, and an elderly mother snacking on fries, passed us and exclaimed over Naima’s interesting looks. She asked me what country I was from and I said, California. We told them our story, how we were on our way to Maine when we lost our brakes. She laughed and said, her mother nodding the whole time, with an accent like the people in the movie Fargo, a Minnesota accent or some kind of Nordic accent: “Oh, if it were me and me husband we’d be duking it out by now. We’d be pulling out each other’s hair. Even now with the baby all we do is fight. He tells me I’m not taking care of him right and I tell him he’s not taking care of him at all. Hell, I don’t even bother sleeping in the same bed as him no more. I sleep with me own one and that’s satisfaction enough.” She smiled and looking at Naima said, “What a wonderful combination. This parenting thing. Who would have thought?”

Shortly after, AAA came and towed us off the Mass pike. Naima sat on my lap in the front seat enthralled with the CB, the very large stick shift, and the driver hunched over the steering wheel complaining about his ex-wife. He has two daughters by her in California and now she sold the house he bought her, a two-story in the suburbs with a yard for the girls, and bought a more expensive condo in the city, so that his alimony went up and his kids watch more TV. “But she’s smart,” he said in a thick Massachusetts accent. “And I love my kids.”

We take ourselves so seriously, questioning our decisions: Do we let Naima eat sugar? Can we stop co-sleeping now? Do we use sippy cups even though they’re made of plastic? I mean, who knows when or where we might break down, lose one of our selves to the world, divorce, disease?

We went on a date in Vermont. On our way to Maine we hit a storm, and showed up on the doorstep of Tyler and Kate’s home in Burlington, sopping wet and unannounced. They opened their homes to us—we stayed for a week—and even babysat one night while we went out on our first date since Naima was born. Sitting across from each other in an Indian restaurant, I could hear my thoughts, taste my food, see my husband as something other than a third arm. I felt the sense of being “one” again. Not one with anything, just “one;” as in not two or three.

The most difficult transition to motherhood has been the shift in thinking from “me” to “we.” There’s nothing like the intense needs of a child, the constant reminders of our needs as a family, to send me into a corner baring my teeth against reaching hands. It’s not a pretty sight. And here I am, just me again. Smiling this time, albeit awkwardly, at my husband across the table. Nobody came up to talk to us or share their stories of flying chicken bones. It was just him and me, the whole time, smiling at each other silently. At one point, we looked at each other and couldn’t stop laughing.

So I have asked, “Just when does one unroll the carpet onto warm hardwood floors and rest with decisions that have been made?” I look out past the maze of islands, toward the Atlantic, my husband’s ocean. Children run on the deck while mothers chase them with rice crackers, sip their beers, turn to each other and remark on the weather. My husband is following Naima around as she toddles across the ferry towards the edge. She’s just learned to walk and already she is trying to swim. As they approach me, I say, “This feels like a good place to stop.” But it is windy and my daughter is squealing, so I’m unsure of whether they heard.

Naima the Nomad: Pt. Four

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