Finally Getting My Fiftieth

Before you even start making elderly jokes, this post is not about my age 😉

I’ve discussed my travel addiction in a number of other posts on this blog so it should be no surprise that one of my weird life goals – in addition to seeing a game in every NHL arena (halfway there), standing on the Prime Meridian (check) and the Equator, and visiting every continent (3 left), among a bunch of others that seem to be travel or geography-related – is to visit all fifty states here in the U.S.

After my melanoma diagnosis, I was pretty ticked at myself for not making better progress on this goal. Oddly, when I was younger and pretty cash-strapped because despite what anyone tells you broadcasting does not pay well unless you anchor the 6pm news, I seemed to have traveled more often than when I actually had disposable income (being a responsible adult apparently was cramping my style more than I realized). So I made it a point to reintroduce my footloose vagabond self to the world a few years back.

I’ve got my final state left – Alaska. And I’m embarking on a trip at the end of this month that will culminate with me joining the All Fifty Club (yes, it’s a real thing with certificates and everything – I’m not the only travel-obsessed weirdo).

I’m really excited about the trip but I’m also a bit apprehensive. And not for the usual, “Will I have a good time? Will I be kidnapped and sold into slavery because nearly every trip has something bizarre that happens to me?” kind of way… By the way, potential kidnappers and slavers please note – I am one lazy motherf-er. I’m more decorative than useful unless you need an ornament in an incredibly expensive yacht or private jet that can guzzle the finest champagne and tell raunchy off-color jokes, in which case, I am completely your girl.

No, this trip is making me nervous because my mom and I are going together. You see, after my dad died I was adrift trying to find ways to comfort my mom. I usually deal with things by either compartmentalizing or running away. And I lost the ability to compartmentalize with the loss of my dad. That loss bled into every waking moment (actually it still does and it astonishes me how visceral that pain can be even months later). So running away was really my only option to cope.

But you can’t run away from your mom when she is in that much pain too. So, I decided that we would run away together to a place that she had mentioned a long, long time ago that she wanted to see. Alaskan cruises were financially out of reach when I was growing up; my mom had no real expectation that she would actually ever get to go on one, just like I never realistically think about taking a leisure trip to the moon. However, unbeknownst to her, I had been putting money aside to send her and my dad back to Hawaii for their 50th wedding anniversary (I got married on Maui and at the time was a road warrior so a combination of my airline miles and points got them to the Aloha State the first time). Well, obviously now my parents weren’t going to be able to celebrate that milestone…

So we’re going on an Alaskan cruise and then spending some time in the interior. This will be the longest stretch of time spent solely with my mom in my entire life. In my grief-addled state, I thought it would be the perfect madcap mother-daughter bonding experience that we’ve never had. My mom and I just don’t do stuff together. We are very different people and honestly, when I was a teenager, I don’t even think I liked her all that much. I was very much a Daddy’s girl. As I got older, I learned to appreciate all of the sacrifices she made in her own life to raise me and I now have a hazy but better understanding of how difficult it must be to give life and sustenance to a creature who a few years later morphs into a strongly independent and willful mouthy little smart-ass human. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I think she deliberately works my last nerve now the exact same way I know I did when I was a kid.

Honestly, I don’t travel with other people much. Oh sure, my husband sometimes latches onto my travels and I have had a girls’ trip or two thrown into the mix; but those are with people that I could sever the relationship if I really loathed them by the end of the trip (ha, kidding (not kidding) hubby). But it’s not like I could divorce my mom or even just leave her on the side of the road in Talkeetna if she’s really driving me crazy, right?

And we’re sharing a cabin on the ship because while I do pretty well for myself, I’m not made of money. All I can think of is the fact that in my condo I wish I had my own bedroom to go hide in sometimes (which is dumb because we have a two bedroom condo so in reality, I guess I do). Despite my well-traveled status, I’ve never taken a cruise before. I have no idea if there’s a place to go hide away from everyone on board (or hide a body if someone really drives me up a wall – ha, kidding any judicial authorities reading this blog). In the first time in a very long time, I’m traveling in a manner that I really have no idea what to expect. And I’m doing this with my mother!! What in the hell was I thinking?

We’re either going to come home closer than we’ve ever been since I was three or we’re not going to talk to each other for a year until someone stages one of those interventions to make us awkwardly interact. Both outcomes have the same probability.