Have Mother, Will Travel

by Claire Fontaine

  The hotel bathroom is filled with gleaming marble and a glass shower door directly across from a huge mirror. Perfect. The first hotel where I have to stare at myself naked comes after days of pigging out in Cairo.

  I take a few moments to study myself. My cheeks are sunburned and chubbier, I need to bleach my mustache and condition my hair. And then I spy the scale. Knowing it’s a bad idea even as I step on, I wince as the dial continues ten pounds past where it normally reads. Ten pounds isn’t the end of the world, though being short and small-boned means it shows more. But rather than fattening me up proportionally, incoming calories seem to have beelined to my belly and thighs.

  Argh! Why am I suddenly thinking about this?! A few sets of boobs, some airbrushed models, and insecurity is already setting in? What’s wrong with me? I’ve just come from countries with malnourished children playing in streets filled with sewage. Now feeling fat and ungrateful, I do my best to deep-breathe my way to a more Zen-like place while soaking.

  It halfway works, and by the time we leave I’m only mildly dispirited. I perk up as my mom and I reach the Plaka, a charming historic quarter where narrow streets and colorful buildings clump together beneath Athens’s famed Acropolis. We stroll down Adrianou Street, named after the Emperor Hadrian, who ruled around 117 A.D. Hadrian was a peaceful emperor, a great patron of the arts and a lover of Greek culture. He built libraries, theaters, and aqueducts, and he humanized the legal code and forbade torture. He also massacred over half a million Jews; when Jewish documents mention Hadrian, his name is followed by “may his bones be crushed.”

  “You know that’s one of your best colors,” my mom says, pointing to an aqua shirt in a store window.

  “Mom, that shirt could be poop-colored and you’d say the same thing. You just want me to buy it so I’ll stop borrowing yours!”

  “Well, yes!” she says, laughing as she steers me inside. “But it’ll also flatter you.”

  That shirt, five pairs of pants, and several tops later, I feel like crying. The only thing that actually flatters me is cute but looks like a maternity top, and no amount of wriggling, writhing, and hopping up and down will make me fit into the jeans I’m trying on. My mom sweetly offers to buy me the maternity top—either out of pity or self-preservation; I’m not much fun when I’m cranky.

  Are you sure you want dessert, honey?” my mom whispers quietly as I order a piece of baklava.

  I repeat my order to the confused waitress, and turn to glare at my mom once she walks away. “Yes, I’m sure I want dessert,” I snap. “That’s why I ordered it!”

  “Well, it makes no sense, you were just complaining about your weight.”

  “I knew I should have kept my mouth shut,” I mutter.

  “Honey,” she says, surprised I’m angry, “I’m just trying to be helpful. You were upset earlier, and I don’t want you feeling bad about yourself.”

  “Well, you’re not being helpful, you’re just making me feel worse.” Of course she’s right but, hello, it’s not like I don’t know that baklava isn’t the road to weight loss. Clearly, I don’t want to do anything to lose weight now, but I still reserve the right to complain about it. I’ll start working out when I’m home, and I don’t need her watching my weight for me until then.

  Half the reason I’m cranky isn’t the weight gain, it’s my reaction to it. I didn’t realize it until walking into that bathroom earlier today, but being in countries where most of the time I literally wasn’t able to compare my body to other women’s meant I didn’t feel physically insecure for two glorious weeks. Sure, I knew I’d put on a few pounds, but it didn’t bother or preoccupy me, and I never felt a tug to weigh myself.

  Now I feel like I’ve just run into the mean girl from high school you thought you’d forgotten about. It’s unpleasant, coming back to airbrushed, anorexic, and implant-filled standards of beauty, but what bothers me most is how instantly, and almost unconsciously, I bought into it. It took all of one hour for that upset, frustrated, and depressed feeling to come flooding back, and strongly disliking part of myself, even if it’s weight I can lose, feels crummy.

  Typically, I think disparagingly about my body at least once a day, and I’m not unique. My girlfriends always lament problem areas, and I almost think it’s a way that women bond. What’s sad, too, is that when I see college photos of myself, I think I looked really great. Yet at the time I was so self-conscious, always trying to suck in or cover my tummy on the beach or in front of my boyfriend, always worried that my chest was too small. When I see those photos, I wish I had enjoyed and felt better about my body at the time. And even though my stomach is meatier and my thighs have some cellulite now, I wonder if in ten years I’ll look at photos of me now and think the same thing.

  Unrealistic standards of beauty are part of our daily visual culture, but maybe I could control my visual landscape more when I’m home, read different magazines, snap a rubber band around my wrist when I think something negative about a ridiculously attractive woman.

  Terms like “the body temple” always made me roll my eyes, but when you think about all of the functions it performs, the human body is an amazing thing, and I like the idea of respecting and appreciating mine more. And doing it now, unconditionally—not after losing ten pounds and toning.

  The road leaving Athens narrows and begins to twist into the mountains of central Greece, where the drier gray-greens of the south become a lusher blue-green. Our driver, Cristoforos, is a handsome, towering man who must smoke three packs a day; I’m not sure if Mia’s asleep or passed out from the smell of his suit.

  We drive through mountain villages where Easter is still in full swing for the third day. Families bundled against the mountain chill gather in parking lots and plazas where the mountain meets the road, laughing and drinking. Entire baby lambs roast on huge wooden spits, half-obscuring the road with so much smoke I’m afraid we’re going to arrive at our destination with a new hood ornament. Hopefully well-done enough to eat, because Mia is going to wake up hungry.

  One of our must-see scavenges is the site of a James Bond movie, the astonishing monastery-topped cliffs of Meteora. The pinnacles look as if Zeus thrust his mighty hands up from beneath the green hills, poking tall, slender fingers of dark shale and sandstone up to the heavens. The honey-colored stone buildings with clay-tile roofs on their peaks are charming and familiar, but like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite, the scale of the whole view is so unlike anything we usually behold that it’s hard to take in.

  In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, fearing the increasing incursions of the Turks, local monks decided to build monasteries and churches atop the cliffs, using winches and pulleys, which seems a feat as remarkable as the pyramids. Until someone finally built stone stairs in the 1920s, the only way up was a long rope ladder, or being hauled up in a net sack like a bucket up a well. If you weren’t a believer at the bottom, you probably were when they reeled you in up there an hour later.

  Mia’s standing close to the edge of a cliff, which is scaring me silly, but the sight of her profile against the sky as she stares across miles of such breathtaking beauty is as thrilling to me as the cliffs. She’s standing completely still, in happy reverence, with wisps of breath white from the cold escaping her smile. She returns to my side and we hold hands, taking in this beauty together without speaking. It’s one of the most glorious moments of the trip.

  It’s not often mothers and daughters relate in silence. We speak our whole lives long in conversations reckless, tender, thoughtless, bold, honest, funny, hypersensitive, unconscious, cutting, healing. Our daughters hear us in utero long before they see us and we hear our mothers’ voices long after they’re gone. “I have conversations with my mom all the time,” my friend Leah recently told me. “She’s been dead twenty years and I still have things to say to her.”

  Macedonia has beautiful vineyards in the south and a faded but determined l
ittle capital, Skopje, with very friendly folks, but is otherwise memorable primarily for four things:

  1. Borders still so hotly debated that our concierge in Athens nearly hit me for saying Macedonia instead of FYROM (Former-Yugoslav-Republic-of Macedonia). He waved his cigarette all over the place as he set me straight: “Was Alexander the Great Yugoslaaaavian?? NOOO!!”

  2. Mother Teresa’s birthplace.

  3. An astonishing little church no one’s heard of with more medieval bling than I’ve ever seen in one place.

  4. Bojan.

  Our Thessaloniki cabdriver agreed to drive us across the border to his connection, a guy in Skopje that, without a doubt, will be the taxi tsar of Eastern Europe before he’s thirty. Bojan’s a tall, chunky Fyrom!-ian, very hip and fluent in English right down to the slang. He juggles his running commentary with us with animated conversations on two ringing cell phones. It’s very clear that he is in command—he’s either scolding, ordering, soothing, schmoozing, or instructing. He is what Yiddishers would call a real macher, a produ-sah.

  At one point, he takes a call and his voice goes sweet and reassuring. That had to be your mom, I say when he hangs up. Of course, he smiles, she wants to know when he’ll be home for dinner. As in many countries outside the United States, even men usually live at home until they’re married.

  Bojan asks us what we want to see, nods, takes the TAXI light off the roof of his car, and hits the gas. An Ottoman bazaar, stone bridge, mosque, monastery, cheese pie, and Turkish weenie-on-a-stick later, we’re heading eastward to Bulgaria, where one of Bojan’s minions awaits us outside customs in yet another Mercedes taxi, “an extremely comfortable ride I assure you and the driver Borislav is one of my best, he knows how to take care of whatever needs taking care of,” which in this part of Europe can come in very handy at border crossings and such.

  Borislav is adorable. He’s about forty, stocky, shy, with the cutest smile and dark eyes, reminding me more of a giant teddy bear, what with his knitted vest and all that real fur on his chest poking out of his collar.

  “But does he speak any English?” I ask Bojan, under my breath.

  “Not to worry, he understands everything! He’s the perfect driver for you! I negotiated a very good rate!”—adding, “He canceled his other rides to pick you up.”

  Borislav smiles as if on cue. Small wonder. A good rate for Americans at the Bulgarian border late in the day—where there is no public transportation, no lodgings, and customs is processing a busload of fifty people in front of us at a snail’s pace—is ridiculously exorbitant. I bargain outside the car with Bojan, but have no wedge whatsoever. He knows that I know that once it’s dark out here in the boondocks, we’ll be whatever’s the Balkan equivalent of SOL.

  A few minutes later Bojan’s waving good-bye to us. So is the customs agent.

  “They’re not saying good-bye,” I mutter to Mia. “They’re all saying Thanks, suckers!”

  I’ll take a rakiya and a mastika, please,” I say to the bartender as I join Mia at our hotel’s dim, smoky bar. Bill makes the traditional libations of each country a mandatory scavenge. Mia’s face is bright red. That’s one half of the team down.

  Because we arrived so late at the hotel in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, I had to pry my desiccated contact lenses out of my eyes while Mia went ahead to tackle liquor scavenges.

  I don’t care what color it is, what country you’re in, or what herb, root, or fruit is pictured on the bottle, anything 80 proof tastes like liquid hell. Period. Poire Williams? Not unless Williams means “petroleum distillate” in French. Better to just get it over with, and besides, I have good news.

  “Cheers!” I raise the glass, and it’s down the hatch.

  Holy Mother of God. My entire head feels like it’s caught fire. I gag down the other one before I change my mind. The heat spreads down my chest.

  “What took you so long?” Mia asks, somewhat tipsy.

  “I was on the phone with Paul,” I manage, choking. “We got the studio in Avignon.”

  “Yaay!”

  I’d asked Chrystelle, a close friend who’s lived near Avignon all her life, which areas of town I should focus on for a rental in Provence. “Let me think about eet,” she said—then e-mailed me a couple of days later with information and photos of five choices that she’d already looked at, in our modest price range, which is typical of her generosity and efficiency. Our first pick was a studio belonging to an older woman, Madame Oudin. I’d spoken and e-mailed with Madame Oudin before leaving but there wasn’t time to finish sealing the deal.

  “Where’s a menu?” I ask Mia. The alcohol’s making me hotter by the second.

  “It’s right in front of you—here.” She hands it to me. “Where are your glasses?”

  I use the menu to start fanning myself. “I couldn’t find them.”

  “How’d you find your way here?” she asks, knowing I’m just about legally blind without them.

  “The entire hallway is pitch-black, all I had to do was walk toward the light, like a near-death experience.”

  “Borislav’s driving was a near-death experience,” she says, imitating a gagging puke.

  “You leave my Borislav alone. Why, he half-bows when he speaks to me, like men of more chivalrous times.” I just want to pinch his cheeks, that Borislav, a consummate gentleman.

  She gives me The Look. “God help us,” she mutters. “He doesn’t care if you die when he sails over the edge of a mountain. I can’t believe you actually obeyed him.”

  Borislav looked so wounded when I reached for the seat belt, it was as if I’d insulted his very manhood. “You no need, madam—I am Borislav! I keep you safe!” He absolutely insisted we not wear seat belts.

  “He sees a seat belt as an affront to his manly ability to keep me safe,” I say languidly, because the liquor’s really hitting me and I’m getting that isn’t-life-just-grand feeling. “He was telling me, in his way, that he sees me as precious cargo he’d let no harm befall.”

  “That’s more nauseating than last night’s drive.”

  She suddenly jabs me with her elbow and whispers, “Mother, it’s those two guys from the lobby, the ones that kept staring at you.”

  When we arrived, two tall, pale, bald guys in black jeans and tees with Armani jackets pulled tight across big chests were hanging out in the lobby. That uniform, along with their broad, stony Slavic faces and the pretty young prostitute at the hotel guard gate, says one thing—mafia, most likely Ukrainian. You see them in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami.

  “They look the same everywhere, Mia. I think they’re manufactured somewhere outside Kiev.”

  “Sober up, Sparky, they’re still staring at you—look! Well, squint,” she whispers. “They must have followed us here.”

  I cast my myopic eyes around for them. Sure enough, in the darkness off to the side of the bar are what looks like two giant, glowy onions about six feet in the air.

  It’s them. The heads of the Euro-pimps.

  “Mom, they’re really creeping me out,” she says. “I think they want to follow you to the room and rob you. They think you’re a rich old Westerner.”

  “Honey, it ain’t me they want. This place has a little side business going, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “No shit. But if they’re looking for merchandise why are they watching you?”

  “Because I’m the mother bear!” I whisper fiercely, because that’s just how you whisper when you drink too much. “They have to get past me to get to you!”

  “I’m telling you they want to rob you. I can’t believe you left your glasses, come on,” she says in the increasingly familiar voice that tells me exactly what my life as an aging parent is going to be like with Mia. She grabs my hand and yanks me away with her. Which ain’t easy, given that my internal architecture is currently sketchy.

  Sure
enough, as soon as we hit the dark hallway, the onions float right out of the bar, like two moons tethered to us.

  Holy cow, what if she’s right? Mia squeezes my hand so hard I want to holler but don’t dare, because what if they shoot me or something?

  I can hear the inner thighs of their pants wheek-wheek-wheek-ing in on us. If she makes me run I’m gonna wet my pants.

  “This is my last clean pair!” I squeak desperately into Mia’s ear.

  Mia gives me her WTF look, then suddenly pulls me into an elevator I didn’t even see and smacks a bunch of buttons.

  But do the doors close? Noooo, the doors are just taking their sweet time . . .

  Their pale-domed heads come into view . . .

  And then float by in the darkness . . . silent . . . thinking their Bulgarian-Ukrainian Armani-wearing pimp thoughts.

  The door slides shut and I collapse into giggles. I laugh so hard I slide right down to my knees.

  “Oh my God, Mom, breathe through your nose! Your breath is flammable!”

  I grab the handrail and right there in my face is a giant red poster with two American mud-flap girl silhouettes as big as life, flanking a sparkly gold disco ball. Below them in words so big even I can read them:

  STRIPTEASE JACUZZI MASSAGE HAREM

  You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  I am experiencing a perfect moment: I’m on a medieval cobblestone street high on a lush green hill overlooking a two-thousand-year-old Roman amphitheater, under a pale blue sky, there’s a fresh green scent in the air, a young woman’s ethereal voice floats out of the second floor of a buttercup-colored nineteenth-century manor. Her voice stops, another piano chord is hit, and she trills out another scale. A middle-aged woman leans out a weathered windowsill, smiling.

  I wish I could freeze this moment. Her voice, the sky, the scent of spring in the air, a smile in a window. A certain softness, a sense of being out of time. Funny how some random collision of elements will suddenly anchor us so completely in the world, connect us to the absolute beauty and magnificence of life.