My Mom is pretty badass. She’s been through a lot over the years, and she’s still grinning. Hauling kids around the world when the US Navy moved us from place to place. Starting a software company in the 1980s and keeping it going and growing. She looked after my Grandmother as she battled cancer to the end, and then my Mom had her own battle with that damned beast.
She had planned a big 70th birthday celebration, renting a house in Florence, Italy for a week and gathering her children to explore the city and its museums. But instead, she spent that summer in chemotherapy. She beat it, and we went to Florence to celebrate her 71’st birthday instead. FU cancer.
I’m very lucky to be her son. When my sister Kate and I were little, we got to do and see things that most kids didn’t. We drove coast to coast a number of times. We went to Australia, and Asia. We roamed the countryside around the farm in North Carolina, and we saw thunderstorms roll across the Nebraska plains.
Now that I’m all grown up, she still encourages us to explore and learn and grow as human beings. Last year she took me and Kate to Athens. A few years ago she took me to Africa. Before that she invited me to visit her in Barcelona, having decided she needed to live for a couple of months in Europe. My lucky sister got to visit Mom in Paris.
Now we are in this crazy pandemic, and Mom’s new home at the senior apartment community is in lock-down. I’ll be there in about a week, on my way to Colorado, but I won’t be allowed in the building, nor would I risk bringing the virus inside, on the chance that I might be an asymptomatic carrier. How do you safely visit a parent that is in the most at-risk category? If only there was was a test that could tell you it was safe or not to hug your Mom.
I love you Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.
TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS 