Bad decisions make good stories, chapter 1

סיון - תשע״ד

     The day after my brother graduated from college, I got in his 1999 Subaru Forester and booked it out of Claremont, California. It was about 97 degrees as I cruised down the endless strip mall that is Rancho Cucamunga, but my sweat and heavy breathing was from the sudden relinquished weight of family's emotional complications that had rumbled along the entire weekend. I was totally stoked for the chance to go on my second cross-country solo college road trip and had been planning and fantasizing about this day for months. Two years earlier, I had packed up my little blue Hyundai, named Fernando, and drove 3,200 miles west from South Hadley, Massachusetts to Bellingham, Washington after my own graduation. I never wrote about that three and a half week adventure, but it lives on in the occasional listener who asks me to tell a story. This time, my task was to get my brother's car from Southern Cali, back "home".

     A week before my his graduation, I left my friends and community in Jerusalem where I have been living for the last several years. When I bought the plane ticket back to the States on a cold and depressing Jerusalem night, my pragmatic intention was to save money working for my Dad and to have a loving and supportive (and insulated) home to sit at the computer each night googling, "whatthefucktodo". Essentially, moving back in with my parents for the Summer was to be my grand finale of what has become almost a year dedicated to "healing" from a wrenching heartbreak before Rosh Hashanah and the struggles of emotional and financial survival alone in a new country. On the Jewish calendar, the road trip finished off the last week and a half of the omer count before the holiday of Shavuot, a time that carried powerful spiritual significance; revelation, completion, rebirth, and the wheat harvest. When I logged off my computer that winter night in Jerusalem, I stayed up by the light of a candle till dawn finishing Jack Kerouac's, The Dharma Bums. I dreamt about Jaffy romping around in the Sierras singing mantras.

    There was a billboard of a woman and man smooching in Rancho Cucamunga that read: "More affordable than divorce, LOTIONS & LACE"; I could not stop smiling I loved America and freedom so much right then. The sun blazed optimistically and the surrounding San Bernadino mountains were beautiful and foreign to me.
     60 miles of strip mall later, I hit the town of Hesperia, right before heading north on Highway 395 to Yosemite. I had spent an hour on the phone from Jerusalem with the ranger's station trying to sneak in a reservation for a campsite in the Valley and succeeded. My mind was set on making it there, all 355 miles, that night. In Hesperia, I popped out of my car, grabbed a bright red shopping cart, jumped on the back, and rolled into Super Target. For half an hour I rode my cart like this down those gargantuan, incandescent aisles. I grabbed things off the shelves without stopping - tortillas, chocolate, coconut oil, carrots and apples. Grocery stores are excellent places to compare cultures.  My entire independent adult life has been spent in Israel, so each time I return to America, it becomes stranger and stranger.  Twenty meter long sections dedicated entirely to "Pancakes & Waffles" and "Pasta & Tomato Sauce".  Essential American gastronomic values that I had forgotten about.  This Super Target in the boonies of Southern California was an excellent observation place.
     I made my purchases and after eating a quick lunch of carrots, almonds and a Starbucks mocha frappaccino in the parking lot, I flew out of Hesperia at 85 miles an hour into the desert. "Born to Be Wild" came on the radio as I drove past suburban developments, ATV parks and eventually, nothing.

     With a little bit of time on the open road, I began to relax a bit more, get serious, enjoy the sensations of no air-conditioning. I had been waiting months for this road-trip and I sure as hell didn't want to spend it in my head. I gorged on gorgeous red Californian cherries, and bobbed about to Mexican polka music on my broken stereo.  The joshua trees, scattered sporadically on the flat, arid earth reminding me of a Dr. Suess illustrations.  I dropped in and out of memories, sweet and sour.  Nearly two hours later, I came to a crossroad where I saw a funky little antique shack on the side of the road. I pulled over for a stretch and to see what desert treasures I might find. In a matter of 15 seconds I realized that my wallet had been left behind in a Target shopping cart.

       I called Lost and Found with shaking fingers. They said nothing turned up. The wind was strong, sand was blowing in my eyes and wind chimes crashed in loud clanks all around me. I crouched behind the antique shack so I could hear through my phone. 
      When Shauna from Godknowswhere customer service at Bank of America got on the line, I began to cry, "I'm in the middle of the desert, I have less than a half of a tank of gas, my license and all of my money is gone" choke "and I'm over fifteen hundred miles away from my home, so I guess" choke "I'm calling to report a lost card."

     "Oh, honey" Shauna said sweetly, "let me freeze your checking account right away so we can make sure no money is drawn from that lost card. Once I finish this though, you'll have to go to a Bank of America branch in person order to reactivate your account. I'm so sorry, I hope everything works out!"

     Then I called my mom and nearly caused her an accident on the highway. She was on her way to LA and hadn't left California yet, meaning, I could make it back with what gas I had and be rescued. In her voice I heard the shocked, my-child-is-going-to-die stuttering. There was 180 miles between myself and my only saving grace, so I followed my mother's advice and made a last attempt in Hesperia.

     By the time I got back to Target, it had been three hours since I left. I got the same answer at the counter in person as I did over the phone. No wallet. "But I'm stranded! I'm from Washington State on a road trip!" I told them. They gave me nervous unfortunate faces, "I'm so sorry, good luck ma'am." 
     I made my way towards the exit though not before I had ravaged through every shopping cart I could see. I walked slowly towards the door trying to keep my inner devastation in balance. My grand adventure of a road trip was one big failure after an entire year of what felt like failures. My head kept spinning: After all this savvy travel experience I'll be branded forever as an irresponsible airhead by my family. I won't get to go to Yosemite. Where the hell am I going to spend Shabbos? Through blurry teary eyes, I saw a little Mexican family approach me.

     "Are you Emily?"

     I froze and sniffled. "Yes."

     "This must be yours..." The man handed me my Steve's Packs Jerusalem Wallet with my Ben Ish Chai charm for hatzlacha, a picture of the Rebbe, and all my cash and cards still inside.

I burst into tears and laughter, and reached to give this man an enormous hug.

     "Actually, it was him who found it and saw you," he pointed to the little boy at his side. I embraced the frighten child too, and then the mother just out of the love overflowing from me at that point.  It must have looked like a scene from a Lifetime documentary.  The little family smiled at me hesitantly, accepted my thanks and also wished me "Good luck".

     I walked back out into the blistering parking lot, giddy, nervous, and shaken.  My absent mindedness, caused by foggy day dreams and emotional baggage had thrown me off balance.  After a stretch, I sat back in my seat and I told myself to focus on the road, turn off the music and breath.  Thanks, God. That was a close one, I hummed to myself, genuinely grateful to the workings of Divine Providence.  Though it wasn't long before a bit of cockiness crept back and decided that the plan to make it to my Yosemite campsite was still on.   It was 4:30pm.
     Soon the Eastern Sierra Range shouldered the western side of the highway. As the sun began to retire, the mountains turned purple, the ground reddish brown and the sky an illustrious pink as the sun set across lonesome Highway 395.  

The heat settled into the earth and a cool breeze came down from the north, a high quiet fell. I was so tired. The front of the car was green and black from the buggy mass accumulated throughout the day. 
     At 10:00 pm I consulted my navigational and realized I wouldn't get to Yosemite till close to one in the morning and I simply couldn't keep my eyes open much longer. In my wallet there was $50. It dawned on me then that I couldn't withdraw any cash from my card because of my now frozen account and the nearest Bank of America branch was 125 miles past Yosemite, not far from my relative's ranch in Calaveras County. Adding park admissions and the gas required to make it in two days to the ranch left me with nothing extra. There would be no motel that night. I pulled off the highway onto a dirt road with scenes from Kerouac stories on my mind. I was at the foot of the Sierras on a stunning open plain. I would sleep in my car that night and watch the stars.

     I knew well the dangers of being a young woman alone in the middle of nowhere, so I made the decision to lock my car doors in case an intruder came while I was cooking my dinner, I could then jump into the car and lock myself in to be safe.  I slipped into my wooly long underwear, put on my headlamp and made quesadillas, singing Chassidic niggunim to myself as the temperature quickly dropped. The night sky was a blanket of stars.  My heart felt so relieved. From the back seat, I jumped out to get my water bottle in the front. The door shut behind me and there I was. Alone in the Eastern Sierras in nothing but my skinnies with everything I owned locked inside the Subaru.

"ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!" I screamed in hysterical laughter up to the Holy One. I sat in the dirt for a few seconds in total confoundment as to how my life came to this point. It was freezing, and I began to shiver.  I didn't know if I could last the night huddled in the grass.   Do I try to flag someone down from the highway in the middle of the night, or do I wait till morning? How much better are my chances of avoiding rape and murder if I make myself hypothermic through the night hours exposed, or if I put myself out there and flag down a possibly awful surprise? I didn't bother spending too much time lingering on the decision, and pulled up my pants. In this time of ridiculous crises, the only line that came through was a classic quote from the Dalai Lama:

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.”

Worries aside, I strolled out to the side of the highway, flashed my headlight and started waving my arms for help.  I had reached a point where the happenings of the day had so much overwhelmed by my sense of outrageousness, that I no longer had hesitations about potential consequences.  Going out to the side of the highway in the Eastern Sierras was one of the purest moment of surrender and self-trust in my life.

     It took half an hour before a car finally pulled over. As the window slowly rolled down, I took a deep breath and accepted my fate: An elderly couple in a fancy car had come to my rescue and they had AAA.  The lady had a laugh that resembled my sweet great Aunt and thus I decided they were completely trustworthy. In no time, a stud muffin in a pick-up truck pulled off the road and opened the car in seconds. Carole and Jerry inquired about where I would be staying that night. Awkwardly, I tried to explain about my next plan to sleep in a gas-station parking lot. They would have none of it, and invited me to stay with them in their home just north in Mammoth Lakes.

     I went to bed that night in a luxury vacation home surrounded by pines.  Their guest room was so pristine I felt the need to tiptoe around the immaculate vacuum tacks in the carpet and had trouble pulling out the sheets from the professionally tucked bed. I slept soundly, smirking at the Universe. Early the next morning, they offered me coffee with whipped cream while the pair made peach jam. Their kitchen was warm and cozy, designed like a country log cabin.  Vintage skis were mounted above the stone fire place and family vacation photos lined the bookshelves.  I felt calm and relieved, and started to feel the enthusiasm build for day two. Jerry, Carol and I chatted over our coffee and they soon learned I was Jewish and from Jerusalem. Jerry began to get giddy and didn't hesitate before sitting down to introduce me to the Book of Daniel. He told me all about the return of Jesus as the messiah and how almost all the Christians of the world had gotten confused thinking he was God. This man was missionizing me and given the circumstances, I was totally at his mercy. Of course I started to get nervous and began an internal dialogue with Hashem asking why He was continuing to play these nasty jokes on me.  I was spared by Carole who saw my discomfort as her husband preached. Graciously, I took my leave, noting their address to send a thank you note.

 Finally I made my turn west onto Highway 120, and opened up another conversation with God.  Nice. I began, "Saved" by Jehovah's Witness'.  You seem to have a sense of humor awfully similar to my mother's.