Have Mother, Will Travel

by Claire Fontaine

  “Sit up, old girl, and focus on your breath.” (My inner instructress has always been veddy English, probably because deep inside I’m far more Victorian than New Age. I hear a brass gong in a dim yoga studio and wish not for surrender but for a butler.)

  The horizon yawned up the sun and I watched its yellow arms stretch across the sea, frosting the waves and warming my face. I opened a book I grabbed randomly from my bookshelf on the way out, Eckhart Tolle’s Silence Speaks. My eyes fell on this paragraph: “To lose your inner stillness is to lose touch with yourself. To lose touch with yourself is to lose yourself in the world.”

  Which shut my mind up immediately. I had a good cry, took myself home, and set an intention before bed for the first time in three years, for clarity and vision. To find myself in the world.

  Which means finding myself in my own life first. Because there are few things the world can throw at you that will cause you more grief than what you manage to throw at yourself. The last few years my aim has been deadly. Determination is one of my strongest traits. Unfortunately so is impulsivity. It can be a bad combination.

  Four years ago I woke up and decided that it was high time to buy a house. We’re throwing money out the window every month! I told my husband, Paul. Prices just keep going up! One week we were in our huge, beautiful apartment in L.A., three weeks later we were making an offer, not on a charmingly decrepit farmhouse under the Tuscan sun, oh, no—on a historic fixer-upper money pit under the blistering Florida sun. At the peak of the market. With no central air-conditioning and a moldering guesthouse so jerry-rigged that you turn the kitchen light on by turning on the oven.

  Paul flew out for the inspection, sat on the hearth, which was covered in lizard droppings, hung his head, and said, “Claire, this is too much work, it’ll bury us.”

  “It’s all cosmetic! You always see the problems instead of the possibilities! The New York Times is raving about this neighborhood! We’ll flip it at a big profit!”

  Two weeks after closing, a category-five hurricane made a direct hit on our neighborhood . . . followed by a category four . . . then we found mold in the bathroom walls . . . then two more hurricanes hit us . . . and “cosmetic” turned out to be around one hundred fifty grand in needed repairs. Oh, and I’m not even going to mention the hot flashes that started the day we signed the mortgage. Not that I think it’s a coincidence or anything.

  And then the market tanked. We owe more on the house than it’s worth. That Paul hasn’t killed me is a miracle.

  On the plus side, a 1920s Mediterranean is not without its charms. Most of the walls have their original hand-plastering, each an evocation of culinary delights: frosting in one bedroom, grits in the other, ricotta cheese (my dining room looks like it has cellulite), and the pièce de résistance, one-inch pie peaks on the top half of the living room, with the bottom half paneled in rare pecky cypress. Pecky beams run up through the plaster and across the cathedral ceiling. My living room looks like Noah’s Ark meringue pie.

  The rest of the walls lean to the creatively repurposed: asbestos floor tiles on the kitchen walls (useful in a meth lab) and, as God is my witness, kitchen-counter Formica not in the kitchen but on all four bathroom walls, from floor to eleven-foot ceiling. The bathroom mold actually turned out to be a blessing. Paul got to swing a sledgehammer really, really hard, for two whole weeks, knocking out the bathroom walls instead of me.

  More significant than the house, however, was that in my excitement at finally being a homeowner (of a piece of architectural history!) I didn’t fully consider the life I’d be leaving behind. I was a working screenwriter; I had a personal and professional network of people I dearly loved that had nourished and supported me for fifteen years; I lived in a city buzzing with culture, major research libraries, perfect weather, and mountains where I hiked three times a week. I had a life I pretty much loved.

  I managed to avoid the full impact of my choices for several months by spending all my time in a library studying to get a real estate license. Writers have an unpredictable income, and I got the harebrained idea that I actually had the sales skills needed to make a killing in our hot-hot-hot! area, thus earning extra money to pay for renovations. Just before the exam (thank God, because I would have flunked) we got the book deal and I was able to get out of Dodge for much of the next year and a half. I wrote at a friend’s home in a much cooler state to escape heat, house, and husband.

  Once Come Back was published, I was away even more for book promotion. Two years later that tapered off and there I was, sitting on the hearth as Paul once did, reality fully settling in. Not much fixing, and no flipping, had occurred, because Paul and I agreed on absolutely nothing about the house or yard. It took us a year to agree on bathroom fixtures, but because the city wouldn’t let us touch a thing until we rewired the entire house, we still had a bathroom with a brand-new tub and fixtures, but no walls, meaning no showers, only baths.

  That I haven’t clobbered him by now is an even bigger miracle. Unlike most men, who are happy to let their wives handle decorating, Paul, being a graphic designer, refuses to do a single thing until he has a perfect blueprint for everything, down to the last detail. I can’t even plant a single shade tree in front till I know the genus and species of the border plants in the alley.

  And I always thought infidelity and canoeing were the biggest dangers in a marriage.

  Every woman’s circumstances vary, but I imagine a midlife crisis feels pretty much the same for most women—boredom, fear, self-doubt, restlessness, dissatisfaction. I can’t seem to meditate anymore and, worse, have lost the discipline and focus to write anything other than blog posts. Writing has always been so central to my identity. Aside from replying to reader e-mails and plotting how to kill our neighbor’s ficus tree, which is picking up the foundation of our house, my greatest joy is that my daughter is happy and healthy.

  Not that my relationship with Mia is where I’d like it to be. It’s good, but far from what we enjoyed in the first years following those dark days when even her physical survival wasn’t assured, much less our relationship.

  A woman’s relationship with herself is mirrored everywhere in her life, but no place more than with her daughter. In the last couple of years, I’ve gone back to some of the old fears and habits of a controlling, perfectionist mom. The kind of mothering I’m doing sends daughters to postcardsfromyomomma.com. Everything else I’m doing sends me to fmylife.com.

  The darnedest thing is that until a few years ago, I knew better. Because there’s no point sending an evolved kid home to unevolved parents, Mia’s school put parents through the same brutal process of self-examination and growth.

  And let me tell you, transformation is hard work. And then you have to keep working on it, every day. Which I did. After Mia went off to college, I took more courses and workshops, on vision, on leadership, I got great coaching, and I eventually helped counsel others. I was committed to evolving. I knew how to choose a life consciously rather than by default, and through my forties, I did just that. I made a vision map years before most folks had heard of such a thing. I asked myself what my wildest dreams were and found images of all of them.

  I’d completely forgotten about the map until I unearthed it last year while clearing out a closet. I opened it up, flattened the wrinkled, pasted-on images and words, and realized that I’d made all my dreams come true, every single one. Trust me, they were all big stretches. Being fit and strong (I’d never exercised till then), inner stillness, connection with God, travel to Europe with Mia, using my writing to help others. My biggest dream was in the center—my daughter home, healed, and happy.

  It was a vision for who I was then: a woman whose purpose and identity was bound up in being a mom. Once Mia was on her own, I never bothered to dream up a new life for a post-motherhood, midlife me. Leave it to my daughter to get me to acknowledge out loud that I am fifty-one going on the rest of my l
ife and I don’t really know where that is.

  I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to hit my life’s restart button, but after a couple of weeks of sunrise meditation on the local beach, of just sitting still with my discomfort instead of denying or dodging it, I feel something I haven’t felt in ages—trust, a feeling that delights me in the extreme. Genuine trust has always felt to me like fairy dust. Like God’s magic wand is hovering and about to touch me but meanwhile, here, have some of this.

  And, voilà, life delivered.

  I’m standing in line at a café and see the travel section of USA Today on a table. There’s a short article on a Global Scavenger Hunt, accompanied by a photo of a man on a camel in strange headgear, in front of the pyramids at Giza. Their motto is “Trusting strangers in strange lands,” and the main goal for each team is to raise money for charity through sponsorship.

  I love to travel! I love surprises! A chance to help others! I’LL BE ABLE TO TAKE A REAL STAND-UP SHOWER FOR ALMOST A MONTH! Ten minutes later I’m on the phone to Mia, literally jumping up and down on the sidewalk.

  The heck with renovations. Putting money into the house makes no sense anyway; the mortgage is almost double what it’s valued at. Most of the royalties I earned from Come Back went to moving and to finish paying off loans from Mia’s boot-camp schools. I’ve used almost none of it on anything nice for myself (unless you count a new dental crown). What self I have left is going to celebrate the success of the one thing I did get right in the last few years, writing Come Back. Before I hang myself from the fake-candle chandelier, or worse. Because Paul really is a very nice man. He doesn’t deserve the noose.

  My mom’s so breathless with excitement that all I can make out is “article! have to go! four continents!” It doesn’t help that I’m trying to listen to her while walking through the Union Square farmers’ market, my eyes peeled for samples of artisanal cheese and piping-hot apple cider.

  “Mom,” I forcefully interrupt, “I can’t understand a word of what you’re saying! Slow down and start from the beginning.”

  She sighs impatiently before launching into her second try at explaining what sounds like an intriguing, if utterly random, trip around the world called The Global Scavenger Hunt. Beginning in China, we’d circumnavigate the globe over the course of twenty-four days, visiting no fewer than four continents and ten countries. Each leg of the trip has scavenges to find, often requiring riddles to be solved first; basically, The Amazing Race without cameras, prize money, and staged drama stunts. It all sounds very mysterious and adventurous, which is very like my mom. However, her final reason, “We never really did anything to celebrate our first book,” is very unlike her.

  My mom’s not a celebrator. Growing up, I had to practically bribe her around the holidays so we could decorate the house or get a Hanukkah bush (we’re Jewish, Paul’s not). She has numerous unopened “special occasion” bottles of champagne despite having had ample occasions when it would have been fitting to pop one open.

  “Are you kidding me, Mom? I’m thrilled you want to do something fun—I almost feel like celebrating your celebrating. And I haven’t used any of my vacation time yet, so it’s perfect.”

  “This is great! Okay, I’ll e-mail you all the information. Oh, and I’m spending the summer in France afterward, my friend Chrystelle’s going to find me a cheap rental. I need to get away for a while, and if you weren’t working I’d ask you to join me.”

  I really should be used to her springing things on me by now; she announced she was moving to Florida the same way. Hi, honey, we bought a house in Florida, the movers are here, gotta run! I have no more idea why she left L.A. so suddenly than I know where her out-of-the-blue urge to celebrate and travel is coming from, but I do know this is the first time in ages I’ve actually heard her engaged and excited.

  We tend to think of our mothers as anchored in a time and place, and it’s a strange thing for me to not be able to picture the specifics of her life. When I think of my mother, I see her back at our old apartment in L.A., black apron tied over a simple but elegant dress, kissing dinner guests in greeting while dressing the salad. I see her writing at her antique desk, music from The Hours playing in the background.

  I can’t picture her life now. I don’t know what cafés she works at; heck, I don’t even know what she works at because I don’t think she’s been writing much, if at all. Something in her changed ever since she moved to Florida.

  She rarely talks about her feelings and I can’t tell if she’s avoiding saying certain things out loud, of admitting them to herself, or if she’s avoiding saying them to me. Maybe I haven’t been there for her, maybe there were times she wanted to open up and I missed the cues. The last time I’d lived with my mom I was eighteen and obsessed with proving my independence, hardly a time to think about her as, you know, an actual person. If my mother were to die today, I don’t think I’d be able to say I knew who she really was as a woman, apart from being my mother.

  It dawns on me that I want to go with her to France. I’ll have to quit my job, and the price of both trips will put a major dent in the royalty money I put away, but when else will I be able to do something like this? I’m not wild about working in publicity (I’m really only in it because it pays the bills and I have no clue what else to do), it’s easy to sublet in New York, and, strange as it feels to admit, at some point I’ll settle down and traveling for four months won’t be so easy.

  Provence is my mom’s happy place. It brings out a very sensory part of her otherwise very cerebral existence. When she showed me pictures from her last trip there, I didn’t see my mother in them. I saw a confident and sexy woman who was at peace with herself and loving life. I want to get to know that woman, the woman always glowing in photos. I want to meet my Provence mother.

  Travel empties out everything you’ve put into the box called your life, all the things you accumulate to tell yourself who you are. Women tell themselves who they are through their career, marriage, home, social life, style, through our face and body, by how well we please; we often mistake our lifestyle for our life and others liking us for us liking ourselves. As mothers we define ourselves by how we mother, how well our kids turn out. Their needs come first for so many years that acting purely on our own desires and impulses can become a forgotten skill.

  Who am I minus all of the above? What really matters to me at this stage of my life? What will I leave behind? And because I believe in being fully accountable in life, I want to examine the choices I made that created my current reality. More important, I’ve got to unearth the underlying, probably unconscious, beliefs that drove those choices.

  And I better do it fast. Because I’m sorry, folks, but fifty will never be the new thirty; you can have your face injected, filled, or stitched tighter, but you can’t stitch on more time. This is my biological ticking clock.

  I was actually surprised that Mia agreed to join me in France. I knew she was thinking of quitting her job, but she loves her life in New York—I wouldn’t have thought she’d want to leave for four months. And I suspect she was just as surprised that I asked her. It really drove home how much disconnect there is between us. We worked too hard to find our way back to each other to settle for a relationship by default, to live in the shallows.

  Once upon a time we made it to hell and back; the scavenger hunt will be a way to celebrate an amazing chapter of our life by taking a very different kind of journey, this time not so far south, so to speak. The extra time in France will be a rare opportunity to take stock of where we are and chart a new course for ourselves, as women and as a mother and daughter. And because we’ll already be in Europe, we’re going to take a side trip to Budapest; I want Mia to see where my mother, her Bubbie, is from.

  The trip is also an opportunity for me to examine my relationship to motherhood in general. How do you mother an adult daughter, do you still mother her? What’s motherhood like in o
ther cultures? I think there will be much to learn in France, where women seem to incorporate motherhood into their lives more easily than we seem to. They also treat women d’un certain age differently.

  We’ve reached out to friends and readers for donations to the charities the scavenger hunt will support and we’ve been overwhelmed, though not surprised, at their enthusiasm and generosity. Several thousand has already been pledged, and counting.

  And so, a dozen shots and a carry-on full of pharmaceuticals for third-world maladies later, we’re off for the swirl and chaos and beauty of the world, for the sound of crowded cafés, of foreign tongues and cellos in ancient cathedrals, for the sun on gilded warriors and gods frozen in time in the middle of traffic, for farmers’ markets with rows of deeply colored spices.

  Mia’s detour ended my youth with a dreadful, unexpected bang. Now I’m beginning the second half of my life with a different kind of bang. I’m so excited about our upcoming journey, I’m telling everyone about it. I even posted a blog entry about it: “I’m going to start the second half of my life with a bang!” A bang! she wrote.

  Of course, you know where this is heading.

  CHAPTER TWO

  China

  The Bitch and the Boss

  It’s not lost on me that it is the Chinese who coined the phrase “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Because I got my bang all right. And we’ve only been gone two days. My taxi got rear-ended on a freeway outside the San Francisco airport yesterday, leaving me with a bruised spine and mild concussion.

  Today peril has found me again. Not because I’m on a freeway in Beijing, hailing a taxi, in the dark. Because it’s raining and Mia paid for a blow-dry.

  “I can’t fucking believe I let you talk me into this!”

  I hate it when she swears.

  Three Days Earlier