Happy Mother's Day to My Mom & All Moms

Happy Mother's Day!

A few years ago I wrote an article about my mom for a travel magazine - Escape Artist "It's Never Too Late to Follow Your Fun". This tribute is an update and adaptation from that article, in case it seems familiar. My mom is still alive, active, engaged, lucid, independent, funny, and opinionated. In short, a great lady. I'm not able to visit her today for Mother's Day, but we're planning a road trip at the end of this month, a cross Florida trek so that she can attend a friend's birthday celebration. In good conscience, I couldn't let her take the hound, although she says she wouldn't mind. Following is my original article, with an update at the end.

"It's Never Too Late to Follow Your Fun"

Ready for Zip Line - Costa Rica

With a mysterious smile and a flourish, I placed the picture of Mom squarely in front of the couple sitting across the table. Paula and George were only a few years older than me; and were saying that they were much too old to vacation. That was the wrong thing to say. 

Selling timeshare vacations isn’t easy, and I rarely refrained from using sales technique to make a point. The photo of Mom which I placed before their eyes, showed her calm and smiling, harnessed and ready to zoom the zip line through the Costa Rican canopy.  

Different people enjoy leisure time in different ways. Some want nothing more from a Caribbean vacation than white sand, hot sun, and icy drinks. Others want to explore the local culture, taking in museums by day and salsa clubs by night. 

Still others like more excitement and challenge. My mom is in the last group.

It isn’t easy to write about my mom; my mother, who is also a grandmother and a great grandmother.

Adventurous and independent are the two words that best describe her. Born in the twenties, a child of the Great Depression, Mom’s life has been endlessly interesting. Through good years and bad years, she has never lost her indefatigable spirit.
  
As a young woman she earned a college degree, when most women didn’t. She  assembled electrical components, doing her patriotic part, to assist in World War II’s war effort. And, she learned how to fly. Looking at the photograph of her standing in front of that tiny plane, called an Ercoupe, always makes me think of romantic faraway places. Years later she raised the five of us; and after Dad left, all on her own. Teaching us through word and example, everyday of our lives, that we can do anything we set our minds to. Thanks, Mom.

MOM WASTED NO TIME MOURNING HER EMPTY NEST. INSTEAD, SHE GOT BUSY DOING ALL THE THINGS SHE COULDN’T DO, ALL THOSE YEARS

Mom in front of her Ercoupe

Once we were all grown and gone, Mom wasted no time mourning her empty nest. Instead, she got busy doing all the things she couldn’t do, all those years. Now free of the responsibility of taking care of a bunch of kids, she lived her dream. At age sixty Mom learned how to sail.
  
When I lived at home, I never had an inkling that Mom was the least bit interested in sailing. She never gave me the feeling that she wished I’d hurry up and grow up so that she could have some fun. She might have thought that, but she never let it show. One fine day she signed herself up for a sailing safety course offered by the Red Cross. At the time, I remember thinking it strange, since Mom didn’t own a boat. Lack of actually owning a boat never once slowed her down.
  
Mom learned all of the intricacies of sailing. She nimbly ties elaborate sailing knots; and learned how to use a sextant to navigate by the stars. For a decade or more, with old friends and new, Mom went sailing. Establishing a network of sailor friends, she was in constant demand to crew on someone’s boat. 

On any given weekend, you could bet that Mom was sailing. She transformed herself into such an efficient sailor that her skills were sought after and welcomed by experienced captains vying to win the next regatta. Sailboat racing became her favorite as she much preferred the drama of competition to a tame day sail.

All the years I was growing up I had never realized that Mom wanted to travel. I should have figured it out since her college degree is in French. But, she always claimed that she learned French only so that she could write her diary in a foreign language; keeping it secret from her pesky younger cousin, our Uncle Carl. I’m not sure if she has visited France, but I know that she has traveled throughout the Caribbean.

A few years ago we planned a family trip to Mexico. Mom opted out a few weeks ahead, because she found a better opportunity. One of her sailing buddies, Phyllis, had booked a cabin on a cruise ship and invited Mom along.

This was no ordinary cruise. It was a thirty day cruise, in a reconditioned Norwegian Ice-cutter, that began in the Caribbean, voyaging all the way around South America‘s Cape of Good Hope, docking in exotic ports all along.

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I'm the crunch in the sandwich generation. I continue to admire Mom and look after her as well as I can. I'm also happy to be a Mom, without my son I would have missed out on one of the best parts of life.