Mother's Day
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My first time to Europe I was in a constant search for a hamburger. I was nine years old and I didn’t seem to care about the different tapas of Spain, I wanted a hamburger and French fries. So my mother, patient as she is, let me order a hamburger in Granada, Spain at the end of our trip. Of course, because this is not a Spanish custom, I got food poisoning.
Traveling around the globe for months at a time is tasking even for the best of the best travelers (which I am not). But what people often forget about are the ones who stand behind those who chose to take months on end to see the world, run the bank accounts down to zero, and get food poisoning in Granada, Spain from ordering a hamburger that had a strange jelly on it.
As you travel you meet the many different types of travelers and the many different types of parents as well. Some talk every day, others every couple of weeks, and some not ever. We have the parents who comment on all the pictures, share your posts, and are genuinely proud of what you are doing. And you have the ones that are just excited when you message them so they know nothing terrible has happened.
So since it is Mother’s Day, I am going to talk about my mom. Being superwomen she is always supportive of every trip I take and plan to take. She happily takes on the responsibilities of calling Capital One when they shut my credit card off for a $584 charge at Target since there are not Targets in Eastern Europe. She deposits my checks for different legs of my trip and is my personal banker when I get a random bill in the mail.
I am required to post a picture or send a text every day so she doesn’t worry and if I wait too long I get a frantic “Excuse me. Are you alive?!” text message that must be answered immediately. And she is the Gibson Girl Guide’s number one fan.
Packing for six months, 2 continents, and 4 seasons in a 38L backpack the night before you leave results in me sitting on the floor face down saying, “I’m just not going to go.” But my mom just shakes her head and rolls my clothes down to a microscopic size allowing me to pack three extra shirts in a pocket I didn’t even know existed.
It has been a long trip and I am a girl so mood swings have been involved for which my mother is subject to. From missed trains to the lack of sleep I think I have sent over a thousand text messages with the multitude of stressed out emojis and then another three thousand text messages with the excited and happy face emojis from the next day after I have slept and made it onto the correct train.
I could go on for hours about how wonderful my mom is but I will leave it at this: on the plane ride home from Spain my mom held my hair back while I went through an entire plane supply of airsickness bags and let me have her chicken when my kids meal was a hamburger. It was a long flight back with two layovers on two different continents and almost 17-hours of travel but she did it and she has supported my traveling every since.
