Naima the Nomad: A Travelogue
We're in Jamestown, an island off of Rhode Island, stuck in a nor' easter. A town so sane it could drive one crazy. The Jamestown Press's crime blotter reports, "Some small pine trees had been uprooted and thrown in the parking lot...a number of crab apples were thrown against the building." In the night, potting soil was stolen. On this side of the country the rains just won't stop. Fieldstone basements are flooded everywhere. And here, on Cole Street, the water level threatens to drown the furnace. Later we will learn of a leak in the roof of the van, our foam mattress turning into a giant sponge. But right now, sitting in my in-laws' kitchen, grateful for the cup of coffee between my hands, I can't help thinking it's like motherhood. It's all like motherhood. How we got here, why we're stuck here, the water that just keeps seeping in. We had ideas about this trip. I believe the first entry of this travelogue was all about our ideas, romantic ideas of life on the road, our daughter placidly staring out the window as we drove. There are dangers in ideas, in the images you keep in your head before the time: five months pregnant imagining birth like a well rehearsed play, every prop in place; nine months pregnant picturing myself working on my novel while the baby sleeps sweetly away. Then blam! The baby is born before the doctor can pull on the gloves; she wakes before the computer finishes booting. In the car, she is completely indifferent to scenery. "It's times like these," I said to my husband as we drove across the country, sitting sideways, back arched, boob stretched across the car seat so that it can reach Naima's toothy mouth, "that I wish we had given her a pacifier." Three hours of nursing, reading I Am a Bunny "It just goes to show you," he said. "We don't want times like these." He was referring to the speed with which we had to drive across the country. Originally, we had planned to take our time. Driving leisurely on minor highways, spending long mornings making pots of fair trade coffee at some campsite. But his job kept us in Oakland longer than we wanted and his cousin was marrying in Massachusetts in a few days. Late in the night we finally did cross into Nevada stopping for dinner at Rye Patch Dam Recreation area. Opening the "fridge," a 98-can cooler, to retrieve the cheese from amongst jars of miso, peanut butter, a sourdough rye starter, a head of cabbage, a plastic gallon container filled with chicken stock (our plans were to make soup); opening the double doors in the back of the van to let the dog tumble out to pee, we felt like a nomadic family. We felt good about the decisions we had made: not buying an RV, living out of a smaller 15-passenger van instead, leaving the Bay Area. The madness was still not far behind. But what madness was I fleeing? The traffic that followed me wherever I went, the number of parking tickets I had incurred, or the madness of being alone at home with a baby? Or is it simply a madness of motherhood, something that has nothing to do with fuels and distance? Then came the motorcycles, about thirty of them with their beady headlights and growling engines. Naima had just pooped. In the van, there was a bucket filled with soapy water and vinegar. We had the idea that we'd wash cloth diapers while on the road. I wanted to knock the poop into the toilet first, like I do at home. Standing over a pit toilet with the door propped open, motorcyclists cruising by, I dropped the cloth diaper down the toilet. In the light of their headlights, I could see my diaper atop a pile of shit and toilet seat covers. Someone honked and so I waved.We wanted a breath of fresh air, a less busy community, a trip on the road to anecdote the depression of single-family dwelling. Little did I know as I stood pumping fuel daily, that distances can't be measured in miles, time can't be measured in days. Soon, Naima would be one and I couldn't help wondering what had happened to that year. Then I wondered if the fact that I was wondering meant I had missed something, stalled out on the road of expectations, read too many novels while nursing. Though the real fate sealer would be fuel rates—that quiet ticking of numbers flashing too quickly by. 7:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Mountain Standard Time, Eastern Standard Time. That's the time Naima woke up. The Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah, an abandoned lot in Indiana or a rest stop off the Mass Pike, it didn't matter. Another thing about babies, their teeth grow quicker when they're stuck in the car. 7:30 a.m. at a trailhead in Medicine Bow National Forest. There were meadowlarks in the fields and a cow moseyed up the road to watch us cook breakfast, a precarious affair. A couple on horseback waved to us politely, trying hard not to turn all the way around in their saddles as they passed. A disheveled couple and an inconspicuous white van, squatting around poorly functioning stoves, one with a baby hanging off her in a sling; the sheriff pulled up to inspect. In a moment of panic, I almost threw my hands in the air. But like the cow, he just came to see what we were up to. "Is it okay that we're cooking here?" I asked. "This is Wyoming," he said inspecting the pot of oatmeal balanced on the backpacking stove, frying pan on the Coleman, dog bed propped up as a wind block. "You can cook wherever you want," he said gesturing to a great stretch of mountains. Then Naima arched and screamed in the sling (teething pains), I knocked the oatmeal off the stove, and the dog stepped in and ate it. In Pennsylvania, the people are pasty. We searched the supermarket aisles for something edible and I felt like Dorothy after she's just landed in Oz. I have to admit that I'm afraid of racism. Before we left, everybody in Berkeley kept telling me how I was going to encounter it everywhere I went. I remembered as a young child growing up in Berkeley, being pulled by my small Chinese mother into public libraries and stores, as an irate crazy person chased us down the street, after she'd cussed them out for saying something racist and offensive to her, as crazy people are wont to do. I've also been seen dragging my husband from BART car to BART car trying to get away from a possibly armed A's fan who I'd just cussed out for accusing me of not being able to understand English. Only to land in the same car as an elderly homeless man, who I'd known since I was thirteen, who told my husband that I just look Japanese. But I'm family. I'm really black like him. Identity politics are such a confusing thing. I'm not black. I'm not Japanese. I am Korean, a Korean American adoptee who's afraid of racism simply because I don't want to cuss anyone out; I don't feel like running down the aisles of a supermarket especially with a baby in a sling. I'm afraid of this expectation of profanities that does not skip generations or women. I don't want to pass it on to my daughter, who will have her own love and rage for her mixed and unknown heritage. In this market of pale people, I did not find it. I found women who exclaimed over Naima's "unusual" looks, large men who smiled at my sling ensemble, and a sardonic cashier who must have thought me mentally challenged because when I asked her if she knew of a good place to have breakfast, she looked out the window at this one-corner town and exaggeratedly pointed across the street at the truck stop. I met an old woman with an old woman's name and a toothy gray smile that Naima actually returned, which is rare. She prefers to glare. And a bag of local non-organic apples for three bucks that are the best apples I have ever had. Even in New England, where we've been stuck for over three weeks, I haven't found a better apple. Jamestown, Rhode Island, a beautiful place to get stuck in, I guess. The leaves didn't really turn this year because of the storms. They just sort of got soggy and fell off. We made it here in time for my husband's cousin's wedding, a cold noisy affair beneath a tent with a beautifully dressed bride and a DJ whose piercing aspirations into the microphone sent us out into the cold. Now there's no way we're going to make it back for Christmas, which I've promised my mother we'd do, after all we had to spend on fuel. It is peaceful here, my in-laws are wonderful, and we have a new idea. Did I say that ideas are dangerous? Well, I was wrong. Ideas are harmless like dandelion seeds blowing by you on a windy day. It's the branches you have to look out for, the things you hold onto with a fist because you believe they are right, they will last, they won't snap when you put your weight on them. Our idea is to make our own fuel. We will make a biodiesel processor out of an old electric water heater. We hear there are others on the island interested in building one too. However, we miscalculate the ease with which we can find supplies in Rhode Island, and sit here eating too many cashews, drinking too much caffeine, waiting for the postman to deliver all that we had to order online. We find out that our pump has been back ordered because of the storm, and downstairs, the water levels are rising. How much water can one basement hold before it floats the house to sea? On Sunday, the postman's day of rest, I walk up and down the beach with a sleeping baby tied to my back while my husband surfs in huge swell and choppy waters. The sky is so gray it feels like night. I am waiting for my turn when I am overcome by the desire to go back. Back across the country, back home, back in time. It's not a new sensation. I've often had moments where all I want is to live by myself again, share my bed with just one snoring dog. Driving across the country surrounded by miles of uncertainty, it's hard not to count my breaths. But the further away we get from the comfortably acceptable—whether it was the decision to have a home birth, not to vaccinate our child, turn down the "ginormous" Recreational Vehicle that would be a comfortable apartment on wheels—the more the uncertainties seep in. How much can I hold before I am off to sea? My husband talks to the surfer next to him, a guy who has driven all the way from Boston to surf. He asks him where he usually surfs and the guy says, "Maine. You wouldn't think it, but Maine has some pretty clean surf." Then my husband waves, Naima stirs, and the sun just barely breaks through the clouds drawing silver into the waves. Have something to say about this piece? Email contact@mamazine.com. In your email, please let us know if we can post your feedback and name in our "mama likes" section. It just might happen. —Sheri & Amy |
_(archives) Sasha Hom
 Sasha Hom (pictured above with her daughter Naima and her husband Dylan) is a retired dog walker, Mills alum, and mother of one. She is an adoptee from South Korea who was gracefully raised by a superbly malfunctioning Chinese American family in Berkeley. She has been published in A Ghost at Heart's Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption; InvAsian:: Growing up Asian and Female in the United States; and Echoes upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings. She is currently finishing a novel and living on the road full-time with Dylan and Naima. search mamazine:
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