I Was Misinformed: On the Road, With Mothers

I went on a road trip with my mother in Northern California a few years back and if you were heading down the mountain on Route 101, you probably remember us. That’s because cars were lined up behind us for at least three miles. Once in a while a driver would become so unhinged driving 35 miles per hour for 40 miles he would hit the gas hard in a no-pass zone, risking death in a ravine — an option, after being on the road for four days with my mother, I was wistfully considering myself.

This wasn’t because my mother was doing anything as heavy handed as saying, “You’re going too fast.” She just read the road signs out loud for a few hours, as if they were something she had just happened to see. “Forty-five miles an hour,” “Thirty miles an hour.” I think she figured this was subtle, and for her it was.

“Have you noticed, Ma, that none of these people who are passing us have mothers sitting next to them telling them how to drive and yet they seem to be doing fine?” I said.

“Ha ha. Very funny. Twenty miles an hour,” my mother said.

I have been thinking of writing a book, "How to Travel With Your Mother," but it would be a very short book. That is because my first tip is: Don’t. Do not ever travel with your mother. Unless maybe you are disposing of her ashes. And even then there’s a good chance you will hear her voice in your head:

"You packed the box with my ashes without double wrapping it in Saran Wrap and putting it in a baggie? Look at this box, it’s cardboard, it’s nothing. What if I spill all over this suitcase? Because I can’t help noticing that every one of your things has to be dry-cleaned. I don’t own a thing that has to be dry-cleaned, if the label says dry clean I do not buy it. By the way, how are you planning to do this? If there’s a wind, make sure it’s not blowing at you and when you open the box, make sure you don’t pour it over your head. Don’t say ‘Everybody knows that’ because everybody does not know. I hope you didn’t invite your father’s cousin Marvin. I can’t stand that man.”

You might think from this I do not get along with my mother. In fact, I consider my mother, who is 86 and in excellent health, to be very entertaining. She is up for everything, fears nothing, and we can talk for hours on our favorite subject, what everybody else in the family is doing wrong with their lives.

We also share many interests, for instance, on this trip in Northern California, driving through holes in trees. I doubt there was one “Drive Through the Giant Redwood” stop of which we did not take advantage.

As travel mates, however, we have problems, not just because my mother lives in Florida and has come to consider anything over 40 miles an hour speeding, but because of what things cost. My mother, who is one of those brilliant crackpot investors you read about sometimes in magazines, does not have money problems. She travels extensively with tours, some very expensive, but she pays a flat rate for everything. Therefore her idea of motel rates dates to when she and my father drove from the Catskills to Florida — the late 1940’s, I would estimate, from the price.

On our road trip in California, for instance, she was appalled that the historic mountain hotel with potted palms in the lobby charged $140 for a room and carried on until I found a motel for $67 a night in the nearby village. It was the sort of place, in its better days, a meth dealer would have stayed after his parents threw him out of the basement, but once he made a few sales, he would have moved on to something better.

The rooms had air-conditioning units hanging off the sides of windows as if they had tried to escape and gotten hung up on the sills, and the mold was sprinkled with carpet. What had transpired on the beds was probably illegal in most states.

“Looks good to me,” my mother said, stepping in.

“Tell you what, Ma,” I said. “How about we go back to that nice old hotel and you let me pay for it?”

“Well, if you want to throw your money away, fine,” Ma says.