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One early May, I had to attend a convention in New Orleans. It was just what my eighty-six-year-old mom wanted to hear.
"Why can't I go, too? I'd love to see New Orleans again!"
I had misgivings about Mom traveling, especially since an old hip injury was acting up. But she was so enthusiastic I figured a nice, quick plane trip would be just fine. That was not what Mom had in mind, however.
"Remember when you were a kid and we traveled all over on the bus? Wasn't that fun?" Mom asked with a grin.
Memories of harrowing hours in bus stations and rushed sandwiches in roadside diners made words other than "fun" leap to my mind. But then Mom brought out the big guns: "It is almost Mother's Day. That can be your gift to me. A bus ride to New Orleans."
So much for my protests.
So off we went, leaving San Diego one chilly morning and heading east. Mom quickly made friends with the Hispanic men going home to the Imperial Valley after working all week in San Diego. Before I could hoist her bag up and down from the overhead rack, two darker-skinned young men were beating me to it. And Mom was raving over the sights of the mountains and the desert.
"Look at all the vegetables growing," she cried, "even more than when we went through the Imperial Valley before."
The giant sahuatob of Arizona delighted her, and Texas was everything she dreamed it would be: the wildflowers, the hills, the bubbling little rivers and the goats grazing in the brushy fields. Mom had raised goats when I was small. Most of the bus passengers in Texas were African-American, and Mom reminisced with them about the time our family first moved to California in the late 1940s. I could always tell which row of the bus Mom was in when I would return with snacks. She was where the laughter was.
The chili in the San Antonio bus station was so good that Mom insisted on congratulating the girl dishing it up. From then on long after we got home, Mom wanted chili, though it never tasted quite as good as it had in San Antonio.
By the time we reached New Orleans, I was worried that Mom was getting tired. I kept remembering the dim view friends took of an eighty-six-year-old lady spending so long on a bus.
"We'll get a hotel room in New Orleans and rest for a couple of days before heading home," I told Mom.
"No," she laughed, "I want to get back on the bus and see everything from the other direction!"
And so after a day of watching Mississippi river boats, being serenaded by jazzmen and strolling through the French Quarter, we were heading west.
Mom remembered all the landmarks and looked forward to the lights over Sierra Blanca and the goats again.
Seeing Mom enjoy herself turned out to be the highlight of the trip. My convention appearance sank into insignificance.
When we got back to San Diego, Mom regaled everyone with our adventures. She had friends and family in stitches over the snafu of "losing" our bus in Phoenix. Somehow we got off without boarding passes and then couldn't find our bus. I told someone that all we remembered was that our driver was about fifty with glasses. When we relayed that description to an annoyed agent, he growled that, "All the drivers are about fifty with glasses."
Our family had taken many trips by bus, train and finally our family car with Mom at the wheel pulling a travel trailer. But this was the first trip for just Mom and me. It frightened me when I realized how close I had come to not going on a trip with my mom, an experience that proved to be one of our sweetest memories.
Mom remained with us for another seven years and almost to the last she mentioned the trip to New Orleans at least once a day. Her eyes would light up, and she'd say, "Do you remember all those goats?" and "I still can't believe we had to ride the escalator up to see the Mississippi River!"
Three years ago, Mom left us for the shores of a better world, but I still savor the memory of the best Mother's Day gift I ever gave her, and what a gift it was to me. I had feared eighty-six was too old for such an adventure, but it turned out to be just right. Mom was usually the oldest passenger on the bus, and always the one having the most fun.
By Anne Schraff
Marilyn L. Ali
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