I am in the middle of planning my next road trip.
My auntie from Switzerland is here for a visit. She is in her 60’s, and is my mother’s youngest sister. She is everything I hope to be in my 60’s. She wears outrageous jewelry. She paints her nails in amazing bright colors, usually with glitter. She dyes her hair blond with highlights. She wears blue mascara. She carries these great big designer purses, and tends to buy new ones every few weeks out of boredom and true love. She is single, doesn’t answer to anyone, and is sexy as hell.
So while hanging out with her and my mom (her sister, remember) we started talking about things we are doing with our lives. My auntie is vacationing. She is retried and vacationing all the time. She is in the USA now, staying here is California, for the next few months. Her return date to Switzerland is unclear at the moment because 1) She doesn’t have to be anywhere, so what’s the rush, 2) She might want to stop in Italy on the way home, because June would be a great time to lay out and work her tan and Italy has great beaches, and 3) The men in Switzerland are “so boring” in her opinion, that a fun American man might just make her rethink the length of her trip.
When I told her about our recent DC trip, she wanted to go. Like pack her bags, and go, as in “see you in a week or so, bye.” And she laughed about how I could do that, and that I was lucky to be doing it so young (I don’t think of 47 as young, but whatever) so I should. My mom had stayed silent for most of this time, and my usual skepticism about my mom’s motives started to rear its ugly head. In my head, she was angry that we would be so frivolous with our money. In my head, she was worried that we were not focusing our lives in the proper fashion towards knowledge and stability. In my head, she had judged my (and my auntie’s) choices as not as noble as the ones she made in her conservative, frill-free life.
She surprised both of us by telling me that I should go everywhere while I can. She said don’t worry about money, because no one dies regretting that they are not debt free, but they do regret not doing more when they could. She said she wished she had followed through with HER plans to travel and see things, and regretted that she no longer felt like she had the choice to go places. She seemed sad that she had missed out.
This real bonding moment did not escape me. I knew, immediately, that my mom was vulnerable, and that I had the choice to make it worse with blame and rhetoric, or I could embrace the time and empathize by acknowledging and understanding, and by asking her what she would wish for me to do differently.
The answer was amazing. She told me about the 6 times (yes, 6) she and my dad drove across the southwest desert, and how they never stopped at the Grand Canyon. She always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but she said there was never time, and they were always in a rush to get from one military duty station to the next. My dad, it seems, is not a very good sightseer (I knew this), and was impatient to get to places (I knew this, too) and she loved him, and understood giving in to his comfort more than her desire to explore.
We went on to talk about the details of the last few trips I had taken with my kids, and about how something clicked in my head that I missed this as a kid, and would have loved to have shared that with her. How I wanted my kids to know that I was taking all my time to be with them, and that money, in the end, was not as important as standing in the edge of something bigger that you, and marveling in the awesomeness of seeing it and touching it. I told her about the things I DID love growing up on the few adventures we took together. The mini mugs of hot chocolate. The red wagon. The silver dollar pancakes and the milk through the swirly straws. The rocks we painted one summer that she still uses as a door stop.
In that short conversation, I absolved her of the guilt she felt, and let her know that I had zero regrets about my childhood, or any expectation for her to have done it differently. I had food and clean clothes, a nice bed and a roof over my head. I don’t remember going places, but home was always there. I wasn’t hoping for her to be different, I just wanted ME to be different. I wanted to see things, and be places, and meet people, and accidentally have amazing adventures and stories because I was not afraid to go. I was not judging her as fearful, just fighting my own demons, trying always to have what I was doing be enough.
Did it mean I was running away from traditional 1950’s stability? Did it mean I was rejecting my mother’s choices and ideals? No, I don’t think so. I think it means somewhere along the way, maybe because of some things she taught me, I learned (actually, re-learned) that nothing lasts and you better find things you love NOW because you may never have the time to do them again. Debt and time? Oh well. Those things will take care of themselves whether or not I worry about them.
I told my mom and my auntie what our next road trip plan was. And then I asked my mom if she wanted to come to the Grand Canyon with us. My auntie, in her perfect-little-hipster-sister way, tried to convince my mom that she should go, and love it. Heck, forget that, they should go right now, and screw me and my kids, we were still young and could go anytime. Oh my god we laughed. My mom still said no, but was really happy to pull out a map and tell me where she HAD been on the cross county drives, and how she remembered the roads, and all about the places to avoid because of heat and scorpions. (Scorpions? Yeah, I wrote that shit down). She said it took her a while when my kids and I first started doing these road trip to understand why they were important, and even longer to understand her own emotions about what she missed, and to forgive herself for not doing it, and not hold it against me for going now. It was a good evening.
My auntie, being ever the sexy travel goddess, decided to make it her mission to bring me and my kids to Switzerland and started making plans. Seems I am going the summer of 2016, and staying in her summer house. My mom says it’s nice and we will enjoy it, but I needed to promise to take my kids to Vienna as well. She said there is a train that I will love, and that the kids shouldn’t miss. She said, given the right set of circumstances, she might come with us, assuming, she said, she was not at the Grand Canyon. All I could do was smile.
