TRAVELING WITH MY MOM - I will not be looking at traveling the same way anymore.

I had a chance to look at travel through the eyes of my 75-year-old mother. She has not travelled much but has wanted to her entire life. To watch her experience Europe for the first time, to experience international travel, where the sounds and smells themselves are so unfamiliar…

This is why we travel. To see and experience life differently than we normally would, without all the comforts of home, to drop ourselves into a location and see how we fair. I’ll be honest, some parts of this trip were hard for me. I felt myself on high alert almost the time, wanting to give my mother a safe and exciting experience. In Porto, the cobblestone streets and hills alone are a hazard to anyone, let alone an older woman or a drunk 20-year-old.

The whole trip was actually based on the second part of our travels. My mom’s first cousin, 27 years old, got married at her family’s farm in Assumar. 30ish guests - Portuguese, Spanish, and 3 Americans. It was such a wonderful experience to not only be with our family, but to have this time on a working farm. This life if not so easy, it takes so much of your heart, soul, creativity, and even loyalty, to run such a place. There were so many tears, so many emotions that bubbled up and had to escape. My mom seeing her uncle for the first time in 50 years, after he made the move to Europe around my age, married an incredibly strong and proud woman half his age. I could write chapters on his wife. Her energy, her love of family, her genuine hospitality took us both by surprise. We felt like our family net just grew tenfold. Our time with my mom’s cousin was extremely special, she’s named after my mom’s mother, Mamie. She picked us up and we drove through some beautiful places. Costa Nova, Nisa, the hills. I am crying as I write this, just now recognizing how lucky we are to have finally made these in-person connections. The trip was all about much crying and laughing and connecting.

We rented a car, who’s idea was that? 😂  We drove from Portelegre, to Evora (a renaissance era walled city) to Lagos for two nights. I love the beach so, of course, I loved this place. From the high cliffs you can walk along the sea forever and dip in the cold-ass ocean. The sea for me is so healing, its expansiveness reminds me how big my heart really is. For a long time, I’ve kept myself walled in, afraid to let anything good in. Then you take one look at the ocean, and whoooshhhhhh I’m there again, wide open to life.

Mom and I finished our stay in Lisbon. Our hotel was placed right by the river Tagus, in the Arco da Rua Augusta district, right beside this Arc. It was spectacular! My mom was pretty overwhelmed in Lisbon most of the time. Everyone drives fast, walks fast, and speaks fast in a million different languages. It’s the complete opposite of her day to day existence in the quite of community in Georgia. At one point we were sitting down, and she told me how hard this was for her - everywhere we went there was one obstacle after another, in regard to moving around. Bumpy streets, buses, crazed taxi drivers, tuk-tuks, cable cars, police, scooters, motorcycles, the lemon scooters, bicycles, skateboards, cross walks with the cable car lines, my god, the list goes on. We can take for granted our mobility, our ability to adapt. Sometimes we forget we our insane flexibility, our ability to mold ourselves to whatever situation we encounter.

In Lisbon, we hired a driver who took us to many more places than we could have ever made it to on our own. Between the heatwave fatiguing my mother and me exhausting her, it was a welcomed change to not have to decide every next move. Now, if you are reading this and thinking wow, what a freakin’ luxury……you’re right, it was. To have our own tour guide to ourselves and to get to know they city from a local’s point of view was something thing I know neither of us will ever forget. He knew the streets, the history, the life of the locals (and us tourists) so well. We were in such good hands. It would take another whole entry to tell you all that we did in Lisbon.

So, I’d say traveling with your parents, whether they have traveled the world or not, is an unforgettable experience. It’s something I’d do again, in a heartbeat. To see a country through the eyes of my mother, to see her open herself up, to watch her be brave, to witness her letting go of her routine… what a gift this was!

If you have a notion for travel, don’t wait. Go, stop saying you’ll do it when this happens or that happens. None of us know when IT will happen. We also won’t be young forever, so experienced travel while you are young, then when you go when you’re older you will have a comparison of how you did it when your body was mobile, and your mind was free of the confines we put it in as we grow up.