When my kids were younger and I was richer, we traveled – at first during their school vacations and later whenever I had the money and they had the time. It was how we celebrated Christmases after the divorce, ignoring the Hallmark hoopla wherever we could. When they were old enough to dive we traded theme parks for beaches in Mexico and the reefs of the Caribbean. We took some trips in twos as well as threes - the safari in Africa with him, the last-minute excursion to Morocco with her. And after they got married and had kids, I took us on all on as many family holidays as possible, from Baja to Bonaire and even back to Disneyworld and Epcot.
I know I should have been smarter with money back when I had it, but I don’t begrudge the cost of those trips; I just wish I could still afford to take them. So when my daughter and her just-retired partner, who had embarked on a midlife, open-ended adventure around the world, invited me to meet them somewhere in Southeast Asia, it was a bittersweet moment. Like many other formerly middle class boomers whose money disappeared with the recession of 2008, I mostly manage the necessities, but luxuries like travel are a thing of the past, and their gift of that trip both touched and embarrassed me.
My daughter took to traveling early; by her early 20’s she’d trekked across three continents. I paid for the first ticket, and maybe the second, but she managed to fund most of her journeys thereafter; she bought silver jewelry in Bali and Thailand and sold it on the streets in Japan, sourced fabrics and crafts in Indonesia and Guatemala for friends who retailed them at weekend markets in the Northwest. Like most parents who raised their kids to be independent and self-reliant, I worried when she was – in the days before email, Instagram and Facebook, phone calls were reserved for emergencies, and postcards took forever to arrive. But now, with almost daily electronic updates on their adventures, I wasn’t worried…I was envious.
When they made plans and reservations for me to join them in Viet Nam to celebrate a landmark birthday, I I was eager and excited, but also more than a little bit chagrined; wasn’t that my role, the Vacation Mommy, the Fairy God Bubbe? When it came to traveling together, hadn’t it always been at my invitation and my pleasure? I tried to put those feelings aside, and instead began to obsess about the potential dangers and hazards of traveling, which had never worried me before. I’d climbed ruins like a monkey, unconcerned about stumbling or falling. I’d always eaten food from the street and never gotten sick. Blithe and unbothered, I’d ridden in or on all kinds of conveyances, from camels to balloons... I’d even dived with sharks. But suddenly, scenarios I never entertained when I was younger began to trouble my sleep. And although they manifested as fears of frailty or accidents, that’s not really – or only – what they were about.
The real meaning of my restless nights was the role reversal inherent in my upcoming trip. I realized in a visceral, immediate way what that phrase actually means: Allowing your adult kids do for you what you can no longer do for yourself. “Not for you, Mom – with you,” they reassured me, which helped me accept their generosity not only gratefully but also gracefully.
I always expected to be old someday, and I have grudgingly accepted the fact that eventually I might also be physically unable to care for myself. But I never expected to be financially dependent on my children, at least not for the pleasures I took for granted when I was flush. I’ve often been broke, but even as a writer who’s lived most of her life on a financial seesaw, I never felt poor until lately. It helps when my kids remind me that what I spent on our travels wasn’t money misspent or mismanaged, but repaid in some of the most important moments and best memories of their lives. When he drove me to the airport, my son reminded me again that he and his sister would remember those trips long after I was dead. “I want you to treat yourself as well as you treated us, “ he said, tucking a roll of bills in my pocket. “I wish I could join you, but since I can’t, treat them, too.”
Whenever they let me, I did. After all these years, that’s the only luxury I really miss.