There’s always one knock-down, drag-out fight per trip. Like clockwork, it happens on the second or third day in, when all the pent-up stress and discomfort of traveling erupts over something trivial—like where to eat breakfast. Names are called. Terrible things are said. I threaten to send her home on the next flight out. She swears she’ll never travel with me again.
Welcome to vacations with Mom.
In the last 15 years, my mom and I have shared some excellent adventures together: Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Morocco, Spain, Japan, Mexico, and beyond. But it hasn't always been easy.
The root cause of the friction can be blamed on our 30 year age gap and incongruous travel styles: I pack light and carry on, while she packs for every season and conceivable occasion. I want to eat, see, and do as much as possible; she wants to sleep late and chill. I want to walk or hike everywhere; she wants to hail a taxi to drive us two blocks. I want to meet real locals living real lives; she’s okay with a sanitized tourist experience.
The truth is, we’re probably the world’s most incompatible travel companions. Yet we’ve figured out a system that works for us because the payoff—the bonding, the memories—is worth the petty bickering.
Our first real trip together, just the two of us, was Beijing in 2003—the first time either of us had been to Asia. You should have seen our faces when we realized we had mistakenly ordered a hot pot filled with seahorses, or fumbled around our first squat toilet. We laughed about it then, we laugh about it now. That’s something special.
That was just the beginning. In Madrid, we ducked into a bingo hall and lost miserably because we couldn’t keep up with the numbers fired off in Spanish. On a trip to Essaouira, Morocco we met the kindest of strangers, kibitzing over tea on the floors of tiny shops, while in Dingle, Ireland we took a gamble on what looked like a very cheesy concert, only to discover it was an excellent Celtic jam session headlined by one of the country’s fastest teenage step dancers. And who could forget Reykjavik, where we had to snake a clogged hotel toilet with a bent hanger? See? Bonding! Memories!
To get to this point of mutual enjoyment as travelers, we both agree to make concessions. I handle the research, bookings, transportation, language, itineraries, maps, and money—always taking into consideration my mom’s various limitations, which include no long walks, extreme temperatures, or big cities. My mom’s job is to show up and be as open-minded and flexible as possible.
From there, we strike mini-deals: If my mom has no interest in the museums I want to check out, I’ll make the rounds in the morning and meet her later for lunch. Then, if I think my mom might hate a certain restaurant, I have her green light the menu before we go—to save me the mortification of walking out after we’ve already sat down. (I’m still scarred by the time I took her to dinner at Moosewood, the famous vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York. Upon discovering that there were no meat dishes available, my mom proceeded to groan in agony, as if eating eggplant as an entree was the worst fate a human could endure. “That’s okay, we’ll go to Burger King afterward,” she announced, loudly enough for people in New Jersey to hear.) So it’s not always a cakewalk, you know?
It goes two ways, of course. When I asked my mom the worst thing about traveling with me, she said, “You walk too fast and too much. You’re also very forward-thinking in your food choices; I really could have lived without tasting raw whale in Iceland.” (For the record, she liked it until I told her what it was.)
And the best? “Your exuberance for just about anything," she said. "Hit some baseballs in a batting cage in New York City? Sure, let’s do it! Go horseback riding at a remote ranch outside San Miguel de Allende? Hey, what are we waiting for? Saddle up! Venture out at midnight to see if we can see the Northern Lights in Iceland? Who cares if it’s cold, we’re in Iceland!”
The admiration is mutual. For all her kvetching, my mom’s a pretty good sport. During a single trip to Hawaii, we went parasailing, despite her fear of heights, and I watched her wade waist-deep into a violently crashing sea on Ha’ena Beach in Kauai. The waves were so powerful, not even the local surfers would go in. But there she went—seizing the moment until the moment knocked her off her feet and pulled her under. When she finally reemerged and scrambled back onto the sand, she was still grinning ear to ear.
And for being such an allegedly "conservative" eater, I once watched her load up on stinky, oily fish at a buffet in Norway. When I stared at her plate in shock and horror, she looked at me and shrugged—the universal sign for #YOLO before #YOLO was a thing.
Our differences are often our strengths: I’m a textbook introvert, she’s an extrovert. And though it embarrasses me to no end, I appreciate that she will strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone. On that trip to Dingle, she made me pull over the rental car so she could chat with an elderly sheepherder guiding his flock down a back road. I was too shy to get out of the car, while she was busy making friends. I love that about her.
Is traveling with my mom the easiest way to travel? Of course not. But the thought of not traveling with her breaks my heart—a reality I’m just now starting to contend with as her spine gets creaky, her knees give out, and her motivation to sit on a cramped airplane for long stretches of time dwindles. She’s only 64, but always worrying that her next trip will be her last.
I refuse to accept this. She may have no desire to schlep across South America, never love Tokyo or Mexico City like I do, nor ever set foot in Iran or Azerbaijan, but so what? We’ll find something she can do. We’ll make the concessions. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.
I was thinking Nicaragua this spring. What do you say, Mom?