The parent trip: Part two

So there I was recently, self-satisfied that I had lightened my mother's bucket list with our trip to Portand, Oregon, last month, when along came another item in the container of wishes, a repository deeper than a Titanic wreckage dive.   

"I want to go to New Orleans."

I have heard this one before: It keeps cropping up like the gremlins you have to dispatch in a Whac a Mole game. I am hesitant for a number of reasons, one being that I have grown to hate flying and the airport indignities that come with it. Dropoff points that are practically in the next town over. Paying $15 for a prepackaged turkey sandwich with wilted lettuce and a wet tomato. Long security lines that result in you being flagged for having ChapStick in your pocket. (Yes, they confiscated it, saving my fellow passengers from a lip balm-supported terrorist attack.)

I have to admit that my mother dealt with all this with more patience than I did, in part because she was pushed around the airport in a wheelchair. She grew concerned about having to remove her Skechers sneakers with the arch support, but relieved the compression socks could stay on. 

We benefitted from early boarding for the disabled and elderly, one of those times, like the Tuesday movie discount for seniors, when mom doesn't mind acknowledging that she's about 30 years into an AARP membership.

But once we got to Portland and the grandson whom she came to see graduate from his medical residency, it was a huge, happy relief. We visited a winery in Hood River, Oregon where we sat for two hours looking over grape vines. We finally got to see the children's hospital where that grandson spent some soul-crushing days over three years. 

And while she found it hard to believe you could spend $20 on bacon and eggs -- "I don't care if it's brunch" -- the trip's payoff came with a speech from a newly minted doctor who celebrated his 88-year-old grandmother and her years of bouncing back when life knocked her down. (No to be flippant about  it, but she has Whac-a-Moled her way through the years.)

For a few seconds in my son's speech, she was the center of gravity, much as she has always been, that  place in our lives where the weight of the world is massed. So the bucket list goes on; May she fill it for years to come.

With bus trips. 





 

    


  



 







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The kitchen table

Image
    I love to watch when my mother gets together with her best friend, and not just because they met on the day I was born in 1960.  I was Mom's first child; Dolores had just had her second. Mom went through a difficult labor, Dolores sailed through hers. So she showed up at my worn-out mother's hospital bedside with a cigarette in her hand ready to chat. (You could smoke in hospitals then, and new mothers rested in maternity wards with long rows of beds.)  As mom talked with Dolores, they realized they both lived on the same street of new rowhomes in Northeast Philadelphia: the 3300 block of Morning Glory Road, a future microcosm of the Baby Boom.  She lived at 3333, we were at 3359. Existentially speaking, I don't think you can find a better example of the human condition than two friends who have known each other for 65 years. Who raised eight children between them, stretched a dollar like it was taffy, lived 26 houses apart and did all the things that went w...
Read more

The birthday pageant

Image
  It takes a village to raise a child, Hillary Clinton once wrote, appropriating an old proverb thought to have African origins.  Here's a twist on that: It takes a village to praise a 90-year-old. Especially when that nonagenarian  believes in her own specialness. "I think I'm entitled to a party, aren't I? she asked recently. "It's not every day you turn 90."  Let's face it: By the time you're a nonagenarian, you have a accrued a good number of relatives and friends. So my siblings and I threw a surprise party for mom with about 35 of them. Despite her own suggestion of a party, she walked in the door not entirely shocked but a little intimidated by the crowd that met her angling for hugs and "look here" photos. As is her nature, she greeted guests wearing a gold sash with the number 90 on it. She sashayed around like a senior beauty pageant winner.      Two days later, she couldn't wait to tell me about some of her gifts: a Bette ...
Read more

Hell or high water

Image
  We were going to the presidential inauguration, mom and I. Not his, hers. That was the goal when I stepped into a Philadelphia voting booth on the evening of Election Day to ensure my 89-year-old mother wasn't intimidated by the electronic technology that would record her vote. She hadn't cast a presidential ballot in person since Kennedy - John, not Ted. At the Ward 65, Division 4 polling place, mom wore her Kamala shirt. I wore enough anxious hope on my face to see through a catcher's mask. The vote itself took all of 15 minutes on a warm autumn night that held so much promise, before it didn't. Then it all unraveled. I was spending the night with my mother to celebrate the person I expected - albeit nervously since July - to be the first female president in my lifetime. But especially in mom's lifetime; she will be 90 in May. I have never seen her as engaged with politics as she was this year. She has a Harris-Walz postcard on her refrigerator. A photo of the v...
Read more