There are things I never would have known, had I not gone to Arizona. The wonderful way the air smells – so clean and good and pure, and the way the arid desert landscape seems to grip at everything, like it is looming and laughing. I met Arizona at dawn, from the window of a train; at sunrise in a stiff leather seat where I sat with the family I was Nanning for – well most of the family. Mom and the four year old and the Baby. We were to meet the Dad in Denver, where we would be traveling to by a tricked out Rock Star bus after the train deposited us at some lonesome desert depot. Dad was a Rock Star, and I was a Rock Star nanny, out in the desert on the train tracks and on the road.We had taken the train from California, loading up in Oakland at 8am on March 8th, 2002, the day after my 35th birthday, and a great big old birthday party that turned into a sort of farewell thing after midnight. The four year old and I sat in the observation car and watched California slide slowly past. She asked me the question that would become a daily part of our conversations for the next two months.
“Who lives in all those houses?”
I didn’t know, so I made up stories. Lot’s of stories. Hours of stories. Stories that spanned the tracks all the way from Oakland to LA. By the time we de-trained to switch trains I was hoarse and thirsty and feeling cramped from curling up in the train seats. Our lodgings in the new train were a deluxe sleeping car. In Amtrak language that means a tiny little room with bunk beds. I climbed into the top bunk and fell asleep almost immediately, rocking along with the sway as we lolled along the tracks. Sleepy, I understood why so many musicians write train songs. When I awoke it was sunrise and we were in the Arizona desert. And then, there at the depot, was our shiny bus. It was love at first sight for me. It was like a huge, shiny, swanky brand new deluxe motor home. You entered into a beautiful, though quite narrow, living room. A slender couch made up one wall, cute, slim, little table and chairs against the other. A hidden cabinet housed enough electronic equipment to keep everyone happy – huge TV, CD player, stereo, and a VCR. There was a tiny, yet full kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and the general sleeping quarters – four bunks stacked along the walls that made me feel like I was living in a submarine. Through another door was a master suite – a huge bathroom with a shower and a plush bedroom with a queen size bed. It even had walk in closets. I settled into my home for the next eight weeks, setting my toothbrush in the bathroom next to a bottle of water (You can’t drink the water on the bus, it’s not potable) and a box of plastic zip lock baggies. (You can’t poop on the bus. The smell never goes away!) I claimed the left upper bunk as my bedroom and taped up a picture of my boyfriend, and re-made the bed with my pillow and blanket from home. The bunk, when I lay down only left me with about a foot of space on either side of me. There was a shade that you could draw shut and there you lay, like a mole in your own little lair. It was cozy, if not a little confining.
The first night we watched, “Almost Famous” in the living room while we drove to Colorado. I found it fitting.
Okay, here’s the thing about sleeping on a bus. I never really fell all the way asleep the first night. The tilt and sway as we sped down the highway kept pitching me awake. It felt like I was going to fall out of the bunk, even with my little shade drawn and firmly latched. And there was this foul smell that oozed through the air that I could not place, but could barely tolerate. At dawn I heard the four year old shifting around in the bunk below me and we crept to the front of the bus together and sat on the steps next to the driver and stared out the huge front window at the landscape, sweeping huge fields of green and trees and little houses with sleepy smoke curling up towards the pink tinged clouds.
“Who lives in all those houses?” The four year old asked me.
“Where are we?” I asked the driver, spying a sign that read, “Las Vegas – 30 miles.”
“New Mexico.” He said. I marveled. I had never been in New Mexico before. I saw a herd of antelope hovering in the meadows off in the distance. I sang, “Home on the Range” to the four year old.
We sat all day at the windows, watching everything rolling by. We made up stories about the people we would never meet who lived in the houses we would never see again. At bedtime, the four year old climbed into her bunk below me and asked,
“Will we look out the window together tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said, and we were back at it at dawn, curled up in a blanket with our faces pressed to the glass.
“How funny,” she said to me, nodding to the sleepy little houses that blurred by, “we don’t know any of those people, and they don’t know us.”
I spied my first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains.
By mid-afternoon we were in Denver, where we finally met up with Rock Star Dad, who was already ensconced in the suite at the hotel and gearing up for his show that night. The family decided to order room service. Here I ran into a little problem. They were vegans. They did not eat, nor did want anyone in their room to eat meat, including The Nanny. I am lactose intolerant. The menu options became sadly limited. I had my first of many meals of salad with no dressing and with a side of fries.
Playing with the children on the road is a challenge. There is the entire hotel to roam, and that is what we did, for hours. We looked in every conference room. We scoped out the gym. It helped that there was a beauty salon. The four year old had her hair and nails done the second day in Denver. She donned a tutu and danced on the side of the stage while her father played to the cheering audience. She was adorable, and it was totally cool to side curled up on the cool stage behind the velvet curtains and just breathe in the experience.
I saw my first trashed Rock Star hotel room. Okay, it was trashed with woolen dolls, ballet shoes, fairy wings and Waldorf school inspired books and games, but as I lugged all our kiddie loot into the bags that went back on the bus, I did marvel at the mess we left behind. We had only been in Denver two days!
Park City, Utah was next, and I awoke again at dawn and scooted to the front of the bus with my little charge to see where in the world we were. Huge red rock cliffs loomed on either side of the road as we lumbered into town. We were in Park City for only one day and ironically, had a huge hotel suite in a beautiful resort that we never used. We got off the bus, checked out the digs, got back on the bus, drove to the venue, parked the bus and spent the rest of the day exploring the town and buying toys to stow away in the suitcase storage under the bus. I took my first bus shower in Park City.
“How is it?” The Mom called through the closed door.
“The hot water just ran out!” I screamed, covered in soap and shampoo.
It was rare that we stayed in one place for longer than a day. We crept onward every night to the next venue, and I learned to sway to sleep as we sped down the road. We drove through Wyoming while I slept. I woke up in Boise, where there was a place that served vegan apple pie. I had that for dinner two nights in a row, blissfully happy to eat something that was neither meat nor dairy nor salad nor French fires. I loved Boise and felt that if needed, I could stay and live a gentle, happy life there in my own private Idaho, with the sweet people and the snowy hills hovering outside of town. We played on the bus as the road rushed by. The four year old would say, “Tell me a story that is as long as this bus,” and I would launch into tales I made up just for her – the travels of a little monkey named Max who was roaming around America. We watched tapes of the recent winter Olympics – endless viewings of Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan until the song “Fields of Green” vibrated in my head as the four year old pretended to skate up and down the narrow bus. If we ran out of wheat bread or bottled water I would be dispatched to the backstage dressing room to pillage. All the venues backstage looked the same. Long dark corridors that were creepy at night and echoed with my footsteps while I listened to the band play, sounding very faraway . All I remember of Spokane was waking up on the bus with bad menstrual cramps and dashing to the little table in the living area to search for the daily itinerary that contained our hotel room number – and more importantly – the hotel room key – so I could visit a real bathroom. That and the walk back through the lobby to the bus where to my delight I found a gift shop open at six am that sold both Advil and weak coffee. It was the little things that I was delighting in. The newness of each day, waking up to look out the window at a place I’d never been before. Recognizing the faces of the fans that reverently followed the band from venue to venue. There was the routine that slowly established – wake up, see where we are, check in, check it all out, take a look around – usually involving looking for a natural foods / organic / vegan type grocery store to stock up the shelves on the bus. Sound check, where the four year old danced to her Daddy’s music, and I swayed on the sidelines, because I’ve loved that music all my life. Showtime, where I relaxed on the quiet bus and wrote in my journal while the children slept and then rolling bedtime, and as I slept swaying back and forth, we’re headed somewhere new. I was fairly certain that the hotel in Seattle was either haunted or habited by serial killers. I pushed a chair against the door and wished I could sleep in the safety of my little bus bunk. Then Bellingham, Eugene and Portland, all cities marked by increasingly longing hotel room calling card conversations with my boyfriend back home and an acute growing giddiness that all these fourteen hour days would soon be paying off in a huge payday bonus once home.
We left Portland at midnight, after the last show on the tour, and I did calculations in my head in my bunk that we should be hitting home with enough time for a proper nap before meeting up with my friends at our neighborhood Friday Happy Hour. It was a road weary me that greeted them, clad in a concert T-shirt with the logo of the band and a huge smile and too many stories to tell in one night.
So many roads, and I was home.
And that funky smell on the bus? I finally figured it out one day driving into San Francisco. I had just turned onto Lombard Street when a cross-town bus blasted by me, filling my open windows with That Smell. Exhaust fumes. Go figure.
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Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a writer and Nanny who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may read more of her articles at http://www.abandofwives.ning.com/
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