Hospice Nurse Moves Twelve States Over

One of our favorite plants was not looking good. I brought this to the attention of my daughter one day last week. That plant is not looking good, I said, I think it needs more light. She peered at it and said it looked really dry, had I watered it lately? Nooo, I said, is that a thing?

The plant had been moved from its old happy home on a set of shelves to a new location in our living room. This was because the set of shelves, really just some blond pine wood balanced on glass blocks, had been disassembled and left down on the side of Cascade for anyone to take. 

Every single item in my house was going out the door. If it didn’t fit in three suitcases, it had to go somewhere else. I was moving to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Upstate New York still has a very foreign sound to it, as does the phrase I was moving. Nevertheless, this thing happened and it had ramifications for every item in my house, right down the twenty-five cans of lentil soup in my pantry.

When the California shelter-in-place was announced on March 14th and everyone ran out and started panic-buying toilet paper and Clorox wipes, I panic-bought lentil soup. Nobody in my house likes lentil soup, least of all me. But it seemed like the sort of food one would relish during a global pandemic. I pictured us hunkered down in our kitchen, warming lentil soup over a one-ring camping stove, and feeling grateful for food, any food.

In reality, the grocery stores in Marin never ran very low on food except pasta for a couple of weeks. The empty pasta shelves would have been chilling to behold had I not also panic-bought pasta so that alongside the cans of lentil soup, I had many boxes of really cheap pasta. We made our way through some of those over the months of sheltering. They were all sorts of strange colors that supposedly correlated with vegetables, and they were really not tasty.

When you are moving twelve states over with only three suitcases, your stuff starts to lose its appeal. Cans of lentil soup: where are they going to go? I tried giving them away to a friend of mine who goes to the Food Bank. He said no thanks. I tried making my teen eat them. Ha. Then I hit on the Food Bank itself. They take food, right? I drove there the Sunday before I left. It was all closed up, the giant trucks silent and the doors locked. There were no donation boxes or notices saying thank you for leaving us your twenty-five cans of unwanted soup. I put them by the door in a cardboard box and drove away feeling strangely guilty. Why was I feeling guilty for donating food to a food bank? Covid has really messed with our world.

Moving across the continent really stirs things up. I’ve been having unusually vivid dreams, even for me. The other night, I dreamed my brother brought the police to my house in the middle of the night to investigate some awful crime. When I got up to see what was happening, nobody could see or hear me. I decided that I was either in Sixth Sense II or I was dead. 

The night after that however, probably on the heels of the VP pick, I dreamed that I met Pete Buttigeig on the street. He was in a trench coat. Although I knew he was a former candidate for President and his name had butt in it, I couldn’t immediately peg him. Nevertheless I shamelessly lied to him that I was a big fan and had been to several of his town halls. Then I asked if he had any contacts in the organic farming or nutritional biology industries, as I was hoping he could help my daughter get an internship. He said he’d get back to me. Even in my dream, he was probably thinking I’m from Indiana, you mad bat!

The next dream was even better. I was sitting in some bleachers somewhere with blankets and snacks. I happened to glance up at a giant TV screen to my left and there were the Obamas, enjoying a basketball game. Barack caught sight of me, and he began to engage me in conversation. I wasn’t sure he was talking to me at first. I mean, me? From a giant TV screen? But he was. He asked me, very loudly over the crowd and somewhat flirtatiously I thought, whether I preferred sporting events or the beach. I told him the beach. Just because he’s a huge basketball fan and the former President of the United States, there’s no reason to lie. 

He flirted a little more with me and then I shut it down. Come on dude, Michelle’s right there. Throughout the rest of the very long dream, I kept repeating our conversation to everyone I met. Nobody was as impressed as I thought they should be. Still, the overall effect was a very warm glowy feeling. And compared to my usual nights of being menaced, murdered, or left friendless and alone in strange cities, this was pretty good.

Now I am on the other side of the continent. I have been here for a week, the DNC has come and gone, and California is burning. The Bay Area has the worst air quality in the world right now. Friends keep texting me: you got out just in time. But most of the people I love in this world are back there, breathing ash and watching the forecast for more lightning. 

Hudson Valley is a little slice of heaven. The sun is hot, the rain is warm, and the countryside Arcadian. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t seen it how gorgeous it is. Covid is still raging across the world. Soon the leaves will turn here, the mornings get crisp, and we’ll head into my first snowy Winter with its election and its threat of further lockdowns. We might get snowed in, snowed under, or just plain snowed. All that notwithstanding, there isn’t a single can of lentil soup in my house. 

Mom and Teen Ravaged by Wild Skunk on Beach

You know how when you’re walking barefoot on the beach and the sand is all soft between your toes? I slept out on the beach last night. This was something Jessie and I have been wanting to do for years, to camp out illegally with sleeping bags and snacks and fall asleep to the gentle lapping of the waves. And it was indeed wondrous. But let me tell you, sand is not that soft. 

The other reason we slept on the beach was that I was homeless. Yesterday we left our house and Jessie moved into the loft apartment at her dad’s. I’m moving to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York for a while: a Covid migration. I’d had plenty of offers of spare rooms, but I fancied the romantic night on the beach idea for my last sleep in California. The day had been a smoking 102 degrees, so the evening was clear and balmy. Stars were out, and to ice the cake, the Perseids!

We know a private kind of beach with a staircase down from the road where rangers were unlikely to find and cite us for vagrancy with inadequate bedding. We just brought sleeping bags, and fluffy sweaters for pillows. Plus a couple of essentials, like chocolate. The tide when we arrived was really high. There was actually very little beach and once we got ourselves comfortable, the waves were alarmingly close. And they were loud. The lapping thing? More like a dull roar. 

But the stars were legion. We saw the odd meteor streaking across the sky, and lay there trying to figure out why they are still there every year. And where they are. And where they’re going. Then we told funny stories, remembered favorite quotes from movies, and nearly died in a rockslide. It was actually only one rock, but it sounded like lots of rocks in the dark and I had not considered the possibility of being buried in a landslide as we lived out our dream of sleeping by the ocean. 

Then Jessie fell asleep and a short while later I heard some mariachi music. I looked up from my fluffy sweater pillow and saw this Mexican dude down by the water. He was dancing to music on his phone and chattering excitably. Were we about to be stabbed in our sleeping bags by a lunatic? But then he took a long drag on a very fat cigarette and I felt reassured. Stoned guys don’t go round stabbing people they find sleeping on the beach. After a while he danced off and I saw his phone light fade away into the darkness. The whole episode felt every bit as surreal as it sounds.

By this time the tide was receding and with it all thoughts of being dragged out by the waves as we slept. I dozed off. Vivid dreams. And then a familar smell. Skunk. The smell of marijuana is just so much more enjoyable than the smell of skunk, even when it’s accompanied by unhinged dancing dudes. I tried to imagine what a five hour flight would be like if I got skunked. Helpful for social distancing!

Despite the hard sand, the very loud ocean, the landslide, mariachi band, and wild animals, I got some sleep. And when I woke it was 5:30 and the stars were still bright and hopeful and the ocean flat. The moon came out in the predawn, a crescent of light. Jessie’s face was small and sweet, cushioned in her sleeping bag, simultaneously so young and so grown up. I could see a string of lights moving across the horizon, some cruise or container ship steaming slowly out of San Francisco Bay. I could hear its gutteral hum across the quiet water. Goodbye, goodbye California! 

It was worth the wait, all of it.  After the turmoil of the past few months, global and personal, the feelings of overwhelm, the uncertainty, anxiety, sadness and fear, I could finally let go. What is that word for strengthened by fire? Strange how the same set of circumstances can provoke radically different feelings. This move that could terrify me could also elate me. Not so much a choice which to feel, as a choice to feel it all.

Jessie woke, and we watched the peaceful dawn wash over the world. San Francisco was wreathed in a long scarf of fog. A couple came down to the beach with their dog and we waved cheerily. Just came down to see the dawn! With our sleeping bags!

We climbed back up to the Jeep and I packed the last things in my three suitcases. As we drove off, I set up the playlist for our drive to the airport and Jessie asked me which song I would listen to on takeoff, and then she guessed and she was right.

We got to SFO’s International Terminal that also houses JetBlue, only it doesn’t any more. I hopped out of the car and asked a nearby security guard: what have they done with JetBlue? He answered in a broad New York accent. They’re over in the new Terminal One, the Harvey Milk. 

Why did they move? I asked. I may have sounded mildly accusatory. We have a history of turning up at the wrong place in airports. He told me to get back in the car and he came round the driver’s side. It was seven a.m. but I could see he was in a chatty mood. You guys are sisters, right? Let me tell you how to get there. He gave us careful instructions on how to get to Terminal One, which was a few hundred yards away and amply signposted. He asked if we were going to New York. My mom’s moving there, Jessie said. She sounded happy. Hearing her say it like that made it feel so real. He leaned in conspiratorially. Well don’t let her yell at any cops over there. 

I’ve never travelled with so much luggage before. I usually get by even to Europe with carry-on. A few bystanders watched in amusement as I tried to figure out the cart machine release. Then we struggled to balance three large cases on a small cart. And a hat. And a fluffy coat. And a plastic reusable face shield. This was all happening before coffee.

I am used to wrenching goodbyes at airports but this one was a breeze as Jessie is coming out in four days. See you at JFK! I pushed my teetering cart through the double doors. My hips felt like they had spent the night lying on some very hard sand, but there was the promise of coffee and takeoff, a last view of my beautiful adoptive city set in the jewelry of her bay; and everything that lay ahead, twelve states over. Forged, that’s the word.