My daughter was born in January, 1975. When she was born, we lived on the lower east side of Manhattan. When she was six months old, we moved to a gorgeous brownstone in Brooklyn which we shared with a number of friends in a “communal’ type situation. When Cristina was 15 months old, her father and I separated. We lived in Brooklyn for about another year. I had the opportunity to visit Boulder, Colorado, a place that I’d always wanted to see, fell in love with it and we moved there when Cristina was about 2 ½. So by the time Cristina was 2 ½, she’d lived in three places.
Once we moved to Boulder, Cristina would spend her summers and Christmas holidays with her father and his family in The Bronx, so in many ways, this was her “anchor” and the one place she felt didn’t “change.” Even living in Boulder, we moved around to two different apartments because the second place I found was bigger and we lived in a complex with about six other families, all of who were single parents and their children.
When Cristina was about 7 or 8, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and my father, after taking care of her for as long as he could, put her in a nursing home. We had visited them in Florida several times but at that point, I felt that he needed my support and I wanted to be able to see my mother for as long as possible. So we moved to Boca Raton, Florida. Cristina wasn’t too happy about moving and I wasn’t happy about the reason for the move, but the “gypsy” in me wanted the change. We sold everything, packed up my VERY old car and drove all the way from Boulder to Florida. The radio didn’t work and we must have sung every song ever written, played every game that there was to play and, in general, had a more or less fun time on the drive. Once again, Cristina was starting at a new school, in a new environment, and once again, she was the “new kid.” We lived there for about a year. My mother’s condition continued to deteriorate and she no longer recognized my daughter or me. My father really wasn’t as needy as I thought, I really didn’t like Florida so I decided to move back to Boulder. Cristina had mixed feelings, she wanted to go back to Boulder, but, once again, it was a move and in many ways, “starting over” again.
On the way back to Boulder, I stopped in Tulsa, Oklahoma because a friend told me there was a great “alternative healing” clinic there. When we got there, it seemed great and was a place where people could both live and get healings. The man who ran the clinic said he thought I’d be perfect to work there and this would give me an opportunity, in essence, to be home after school for Cristina. We stayed there for a week and then continued our trip back to Boulder. Once there, the only apartment we could find that I could afford was awful and the school that Cristina had to go to was full of really snotty, nasty kids who made fun of her “wild” curly hair and freckles and, in general, teased her and made her life miserable. I then found another better and bigger apartment, but this meant that ONCE AGAIN Cristina was “new” at the school and had to make another whole set of adjustments.
Although I knew she wasn’t quite happy about all the moves, she never really protested very much and “Gypsy” me really loved it. I felt that life for me would be best lived in a tent or probably a mobile home. Maybe, in retrospect (how great hindsight is!) this was my way of doing what I wanted to do and it seemed that my only vacations was all this moving around.
I got a call from the man in Tulsa who offered me a job, room and board and the chance to get training and be part of healing work that I really believed in. So, guess what? We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Even harder for Cristina (which I didn’t realize at the time), was that we were eating RAW food (which is all the rage right now, but this was around 1983 and NO ONE had heard about this), and this was totally embarrassing to Cristina who brought fruit for lunch and was made fun of while everyone else was eating peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. Unfortunately, the work at the clinic and the man I was working for were not quite as good a situation as I thought it would be and… we moved back to Boulder. Another apartment, another school, and although Cristina still had friends in Boulder, a different neighborhood made it more difficult to see her old friends.
Then in 1986, I was offered the opportunity to be in a special two year Master’s Degree Program in Chicago. I remember the absolutely HORRIFIED look on Cristina’s face when I said I wanted to move again, but I managed to “convince” her that this would be a great move and opportunity. The school was in Lombard, Illinois and, by the time Cristina was 11 years old, she’s been back and forth across the country and been in 7 different schools. The first year of school was in Lombard, the second year, because part of my Master’s Degree was in Urban Studies, we moved into Chicago. This meant ANOTHER school and a whole completely new and different environment. At this point, Cristina and I had begun talking about how the moving had affected her and I finally (duh) got to understand how difficult this has been for her. Oh, the apologizing and groveling I did!
When it was time for her to go to high school, the only way I could think of to “make it up” to her for all the moving around I had made her do was to tell her that she could go to ANY high school she wanted and we’ve move to WHEREVER she wanted to go to that school. She chose a High School for the Performing Arts that was down at the other end of Chicago, but that’s where she wanted to go, so that’s where we went.
After High School, she attended Loyola University here in Chicago for about a year and then decided she wanted to move back to New York (where she has family) and finish her education there. She was 19 and by that time, we’d had many, many more conversations about the moving around and how it affected her and I’d apologized many, many times for my blindness at the difficulty that this had caused her. Unfortunately, in the midst of her planning to move to New York, she was diagnosed with leukemia and her plans were not to happen. She stayed here in Chicago.
In 2004, when she was finally physically stronger, she said she wanted to move to California. A friend who initially said she wanted to move there too, backed out on her, but Cristina had made up her mind. Although most of our previous discussions had been about the “negative” aspects of her moving around, now we both (especially her) started examining the “positive” aspects. She felt that although she would have to make the move alone, she was eager to give it a try. She felt that all the moving around had made her adaptable, able to deal with and be around all types of people at all levels, given her a lot of independence, self-confidence and courage. She moved, and although it has been difficult, she has persevered is building her own life on her own terms.
Maybe being a “Gypsy” hasn’t been so bad after all!
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