Us Nomads

Definition: “a member of people... wandering from place to place usually seasonally and with a well defined territory in order to secure a food supply.” Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.

National Geographic documents real nomads every now and then. It looks so glamorous. The man of the house rides up on this Mongolian pony, hair in a pigtail, face bronzed from the sun (a direct descendant of Ghengis Khan), dressed to the nines in rawhide and fur. He swaggers into the yurt, and tells the little woman, Honey, tomorrow we pull up stakes and head south because the horses are having trouble finding grass. Honey looks around–her priceless Persian rugs hug the walls, the cookstove heats the tea for supper, goat meat sizzles on the spit, she knows she is pregnant but she hasn’t told him yet. She will have to leave all of this, strike the tent, roll up everything else, search anew for herbs to flavor the meat and buffalo chips for the fire, secure the stores of foodstuff packed away for a rainy day, find all of the dogs and coop them up, make sure the children are dressed appropriately, and be ready by daybreak to trudge at least 10 miles uphill where the grass still grows, all the while having dinner ready and keeping track of the kids and keeping in place the smile, smile, smile..

I never thought of myself as a nomad, a transient person, but excepting for the search for a food supply, it fits me pretty well. As a matter of fact, it fits a lot of folks pretty well, although I will wager that they don’t think of themselves that way, either. Ask us, and we will tell you “We’re following the sun; we are tired of shoveling snow; we don’t want to fall down on the ice in the driveway; we don’t like winter,” and other excuses. They call us snowbirds. I’ve been doing it for eleven years and it is beginning to wear on me. I took my snow boots out of the Colorado closet last week, and they looked downright comfortable compared to my sandals. When I complain to friends about the difficulty of pulling up stakes every six months and beginning anew, they take this holy attitude that they have no trouble at all with the transition, what’s the matter with you?

I’ll tell you how some of them cope.

Example number one: They don’t even pack their car. They hang their clothes on a rail in the backseat of the car and Away They Go. Pretty simple, eh? Yeah. And they have everything they need in duplicate. That's solution number one.

Solution number two: They fly back and forth and have a car in both places. But they are beginning to rail at that flight surcharge of $25 for the second suitcase and they pack some stuff and other friends take it in their car to the destination they share. Lucky they have a laptop. It’s a carry-on.

Solution number three: They too fly back and forth, but the lady of that house digs up her geraniums and mails them to herself back home the day before her flight leaves (really!). You’ve got to admire that.

In my case, there are lots of things I just don’t need two of. So our van looks like part of a gypsy caravan when fully loaded to the Plimsoll line. It was bad enough before we got a dog, because Molly’s crate takes up a space 42" Long and 36" High and 36" Wide and that is a considerable amount of cubic inches that I used to be able to utilize. For my plants. For the sewing machine. (Who wants two sewing machines? Suppose someone’s seams get ripped? Suppose you want to make something? It’ll have to wait six months because the sewing machine is at the other place.) For the new printer. For the golf clubs. For the ice chest. For the foot bath. For the tool box. For the Simpson meter. For my seeds. For the bathroom stuff. For the favorite CDs. (Who can live 6 months without listening to your favorite artists? Jimmy Durante. John Gary. Any Italian tenor singing Tosca. For Gilbert, for Sullivan. The list is endless. Thank goodness they don’t take a lot of space.) For the garage sale end table that will just fit under the window where we are going? We are old. We take a bunch of medicine. I can’t cut down on the Christmas trees; I already have one of them in both locations, just in case. Et cetera.

We’ve been home for two weeks now and we are still eating food I brought along from my Arizona pantry. So here’s the thing. I can’t just not nomad any longer because it has become a health issue for my husband. He thinks he can’t live in a cold climate again. What is the use of marrying a Scandinavian if he doesn’t like snow anymore? (No, that’s not an option, and I’m keeping the dog, too.)

So: 1. No more overstocked shelves even if groceries are a lot cheaper in Arizona than here.
2. Adjust to being frugal. Do without some of that stuff. Where to start? I need all of that clutter.
3. I have 5 3/4ths months to think of something but I already know what the answer is. I’ll do it all over again in October. Well, everything but the smile, smile, smile...