Roadtrippin...With Mom

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Some people ask how I became a world traveler. I guess I got it from my mother. Or did I? She never told us to be curious or seek out new places, but she made an argument to always dream for what you might not be able to have. I am a child of the 60’s and with that comes memories that are now hard to imagine. In today’s crazy over-protective world, I am convinced that my parents may have been jailed by the child protective peeps. Riding in the back of trucks, no helmets, no knee pads, we were left to wander the small towns with our friends as long as we were back for dinner. Basically, the world was safer on minds because we didn’t know we were supposed to worry. They were very very good parents, but exactly how us kids were not lost in transit I will never truly understand!

We’d call dibs for the rear window seat or lay across the back seat on the floor covered in pillows. Sometimes we would be in the way back of the “first SUV”, with absolutely no seat belts anywhere in the cars and we would hang out the very back window of the car and wave to the trucker to blow their big air horns. There were no CD or DVD players. We packed sandwiches in wax paper, block ice in Styrofoam coolers would protect Jello molds with shredded carrots and then we picked up doughnuts at gas stations for the rare, sweet treat. She was a sucker for a roadside fruit stand and could spot a Dairy Queen five miles away! We learned to read maps at a young age and could find our way to a campground no matter how rural the area.

I grew up driving from Seattle Washington to Portland Oregon every month. As a family we camped at all the state parks in both states. If it wasn’t enough to live with Mount Rainier outside your back door, a few times a month we enjoyed the sights of Mount Hood in Oregon and so I was always lucky enough to have had this majestic beauty forever in my daily view.

Doesn’t the entire world look at these mountain ranges every day? If you did… you too would believe in BIGFOOT!

Last weekend I made a trip back to my favorite place to visit. My childhood home! Everything is familiar and comfortable, and as soon as I gave mom a hug, my childhood recollections came flooding back to my newly minted 60-year-old brain. Maybe nostalgia takes over? I spent a few days kind of lost in the transition from being her child to wondering how I will eventually provide guidance for my mom as she ages.

These few days were a mixed bag of emotions, reality and an initial doom and gloom of the responsibility to be the oldest. My sister and I walked mom through the process of grieving her husband of 54 years in a personal and very private remembrance. Water in its purest form is invisible to conflict. It can be both forceful and gentle depending on situations, and water is a necessity for the world to exist. My Dad was representative of the flow of water in our family. The swiftness of the river waters flowing downstream from Mount Rainier to the confluences of streams and rivers took our dad’s memories from the fresh water of our local river along a spiritual journey which eventually led to the saltiness of the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

For the occasion, what else would be fitting but to take a ROADTRIP!...with my Mom!

Mom has always started conversations with people we met. There were no strangers, just people we had never met before. Through these people we learned more about the world and found it was the stuff dreams are made of. So, I decided just to throw her in the RV and away we would go.

This was more than a trip down the road. I took this opportunity to just reminisce with mom. We were on this strange journey together and it started way back when I was in my mid 20’s. It was August 2, 1990, and that was the day of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the massive and intimidating war machine that Saddam Hussain had assembled. My parents had attended my Basic Training graduation February 1990 and I had just returned from my specialty course and had actively enrolled in Officer Candidate School 60 days before the Kuwait invasion. Things got crazy quickly, our family acted very much like parents and a daughter getting activated and traveling to a foreign country on deployment. My parents had only 9 days to respond to my activation order. I literally departed and landed in Saudi Arabia and left them to pack up my apartment, take over my bills and put everything in storage. The small things that when you become a parent you would never guess you would ever do. Spending days packing up your kid’s life and stuffing cardboard apple boxes into a storage garage. Working with banks and paying bills ect. But the one thing that was nearly overlooked was getting a few moments to properly say goodbye and let the shock of it all sink in. The missing thing was that extra time to give a big hug and heartfelt I love you’s and that final goodbye with the last glance over your shoulder, tears rolling down your cheeks.

We repeated this distanced appreciation of our roles. I deployed again and again and by the Kosovo Deployment in 2008, I sincerely told my parents, “Honestly, this is a deployment that you don’t have to worry about anything, I will be completely safe!” My Mother looked deep into my eyes and snarled, “You have told me that every time and every time you apparently thought it was okay to lie to your family. I do not believe you and you have no idea what it is like to be your mother. I can worry if I want.” Of course, this snarly side of my mom was the same personality trait that she activated back in 1990 when she did her own personal “Sit-In” at the Washington State Governors Office. This was her way of feeling like she could support the troops and our inability to receive snail mail during the first few months of Operation Desert Storm. Yup, she was that mom. She never quite understood that sometimes her opinions were not in line with the military. I had many “Freek Out” moments based on her strong catalytic approach to problem solving!

As time has passed, we start to remember the life I knew of growing up differently. I am the one giving the verbal cues and making the story more grandiose than it probably happened, but how do you make your final thank you speech a lasting impact on a changing memory. I spent nearly 30 years serving my country in a very public way. Yet those closest to me received my attention and time in a very private way. As I am on this current journey to see the “Good in the World”, maybe everything I needed to look for was already here.

33 years ago, in the middle of the Saudi Arabian Desert there was one AT&T phone bank with 50 phones to make a collect call home. Standing in line for over an hour already, there was a terrifying incident when the sirens started screaming, Patriot Missiles were being launched at the incoming Iraqi Scuds. As other Soldiers ran for the bunkers, I decided to run towards the telephones and asked the phone operator to dial home. She thought that was a bad idea because she could hear the sirens as well. She answered and I kept her on the phone line because I needed to hear a mom’s voice, that familiar laugh and true to my personality, I did capitalize on the fear of others to jump the long line! Lesson Learned: You mother will never forgive you for calling during a Scud attack!

23 years ago, I spent time on the tiny Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and would share with her about my relationships with the local islanders and their life living in a third world country. I would tell her of slipping some food to the locals or buying their little fish they would catch with archaic approach using strings and a hook on the end of a pole. I would tell her of the appreciation that the Soldiers would have for those less fortunate than us and how these young people would make America proud because of their relentless caring and sincerely wanting to build them a clinic because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t give her an opportunity to get all mushy about my army stuff, but when I returned home, she gave me a signed print of “One Shoe”. She met a stranger of course, and talked about me and my military mission and next thing you know, this lady draws a picture of what my mom saw through my eyes: stories of islanders who were so poor that they all had to share the “One Shoe”.

13 years ago, I tried to show military appreciation to my family who had long given up on quality time versus a military career. I went home to the land of rain, amazing mountains, and my family for my final promotion. They witnessed the pinning on of those lieutenant bars back in 1993 and then the bright silver oak leaf insignia. A full circle of commitment by families who serve our country not by choice but by commitment to those they love.

3 years ago, I retired.

Our journey has been filled with a parents’ sustainable love through everything my military career could put a family through. Nearly thirty years of what I would call “Adventures”, my mom would probably call mortifyingly scary. All the pride they felt as they told everyone of a daughter who is in the army who has trucks and commands Soldiers. At the same time, I was jet-setting from deployment to deployment and traveling the world. Parents sometimes are given the best gift the army can give: A child who rarely comes home outside of holidays and special events.

At the end of our time together on the road, the only thing missing was a stop at a local garage sale and finding the deal of the century on those crocheted doily things and cheap mason jars. I am not sure that during the twelve hours of time spent together that I had the proper message. The message that every family longs to understand… How does my loved one join the military and spend most of their adult life chasing dreams to make a difference in foreign lands and protecting those who are less fortunate?

It is because of the silent love of a family. Message for delivery - - - Thanks for the Roadtrip Mom! Bumpy roads, corners that were hard to navigate and surprises that a family reacts and adjusts to. Families support not only a child, but a Country. Thank you!

My mom thought it a piece of great luck that we found a fruit stand just a few miles from her house. We bought Huckleberry shakes and Rainier Cherries. We savored that shake and ate those cherries right there in the parking lot. Giggling and spitting the seeds out the window, just as we have been doing for 50 years.

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