When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home (11 page)

Africa couldn't have been this crowded when Ava was there. I would have remembered. There were lines at the buffet tables at the lodges, busloads of tourists at roadside gift shops, and one day when a female lion was spotted with her cubs, the word went out and within minutes the traffic looked like a police raid on a nude bar.

I was the woman of mystery on the trip. I dressed for dinner. At night I stared for hours at the campfire and was also the only person who did not have a camera around my neck.

One night as I relaxed alone by the dying fire, Tim passed by on his way to Max's tent. He was trying to trade his malaria pills for a roll of Kodachrome ASA 64. He paused before he spoke. “I'm curious. What do you get out of this trip? I don't see how you can come on a camera safari to Africa and sit there like a portrait with all those animals around just waiting to be shot. Wouldn't you like to go home with a picture of a white rhino for your fireplace or den?”

I smiled. “Africa isn't a place where you have to have a reason to come. I don't want my vision limited by a camera lens. I'm content to eat Africa's dust, sweat in its heat, bask in its silence. I don't have to zoom in on a hippo yawning. It's enough for me to pull up to a water hole at dusk, turn off the motor of the Land Rover, and just sit and watch for hours the parade of animals that come to drink or roll around in the mud to coat and soothe their wounds. Or maybe relax on the deck of a boat on the Zambezi River on a cool African evening and watch crocodiles surface. Africa is a place for adventurers . . . for lovers and romantics. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

There was a long pause before he said, “Get a life” and disappeared in the darkness.

Actually, my being on the trip did serve some purpose. I was a photographer's decoy. This is how it worked. If one of the camera people wanted to take a picture of a park ranger with earlobes to his shoulders, with bones in them, he would get me to stroll within camera range and strike a pose. Then at the last minute, he would swing the camera out of my range and get the picture he really wanted.

One night during our final week in Africa, I was sitting on the veranda in one of the game lodges sipping on something cold. I had tied a yellow scarf around my pith helmet, and, miracle of miracles, my nail polish didn't clash with the khaki safari jacket. I ran my fingers around the rim of the glass, lost in fantasy of the movie Mogambo with Clark Gable, Grace Kelly, and Ava.

I was remembering when Grace Kelly decided to take a walk away from the camp compound and Clark Gable, fearing for her safety, ran after her and was so relieved she was safe he forgot she belonged to someone else and they kissed under the brilliant African sky, silhouetted with acacia trees.

I drifted back to reality. The photographers around the table were bragging about the trophies they had shot that day. Collectively they had bagged the rear of one Cape buffalo, the possible tail of the elusive Colobus monkey, three wart hogs, a Masai sheepherder, and three marabou storks eating garbage outside the lodge kitchen.

I said I was returning to my room when Vern shouted to my husband, “You aren't going to let your wife roam out there in the darkness by herself with all that wildlife, are you?” My husband rose. “Of course not,” he said. My heart swelled. He motioned to a ranger with a bow and arrow standing near the door to escort me to my quarters.

“Photo opportunity!” yelled June. “Don't miss it.” The group scurried like newborn field mice. Cameras appeared and the entire table of photographers twisted viewfinders and adjusted lenses and light meters to capture the ranger with a bow and arrow and Erma in her Banana Republic garb en route to her room.

Later, when the slide was flashed on our home screen, our children were underwhelmed. “Mom doesn't look real happy,” said one.

“That's because she's thinking about her poor children sitting at home eating frozen dinners and being culturally deprived.”

“That's it!” said the other one. “It's guilt. We could change that, you know. Just take us with you the next time.”

It would serve 'em right.

Picking a Date for the

Family Trip

How about the first week of summer vacation?

“I can't get a sub for my paper route.”

The second week?

“My boss takes his vacation.”

Third week?

“Football practice starts.”

Fourth week?

“I got tickets for a concert.”

Fifth week?

“My dental work cannot be postponed again.”

“I have to be here when they paint the house.”

Sixth week?

“Bad. Prestons are going out of town. I'm sitting.”

Seventh week?

“Who is nuts enough to travel on a holiday weekend?”

Eighth week?

“I'm between paychecks and can't afford it.”

Ninth week?

“That won't give me time to get new underwear for everyone.”

Tenth week?

“That's our busy month at the drive-in. They'd kill me.”

Eleventh week?

“That's when the Cramdens go and they sit our dog.”

Twelfth week?

“Too hot.”

“Besides, we have school the next morning after we get back.”

“I won't have to time to do the laundry.”

“Do we have to go?”

“Hold it! This is the date we are all going on a family vacation. No one will be excused for any reason. We are all going to play together and have a fun time or I'm going to break a few heads!”

Rafting Down the

Grand Canyon

Standing at the south rim of the Grand Canyon, our family looked like an ad for constipation. I had never seen a more surly or unhappy group in my life.

Our daughter was ticked off because it was four in the morning and she didn't want to be there. Her brothers were fighting because one of them was staring at the other one, and my husband didn't know how he could possibly be on a raft on the Colorado River for six days with only a gym bag of clothes. “They expect me to survive with a bathing suit, a pair of shorts, and three pairs of underwear? I pack more clothes than that to go to the bathroom.” I was angry because the last thing I told all of them before leaving home was to wear sensible hiking shoes and there they were in thongs that an eight-mile hike on a rocky trail would rip to shreds. Unless, of course, they didn't fall and break their necks first.

We were together all of five minutes before the entire group pushed ahead and left me behind like a bad habit. As I picked my way slowly down the rocky trail to where a raft awaited, I thought a lot about why we were doing this. Our teenagers did not want to be with us. They had made that clear. They wanted to be home working on their book, Parents Dearest.

A sharp pain in my right knee got my attention. We should have stopped having children when we had the majority vote. Now it was three to two. That meant they had control of the phone, car radio, and all other lines of communication. They manipulated every aspect of our lives. They literally controlled the budget and the spending. They had the last word on all major decisions. This vacation was the first undemocratic thing we had done in years. Why didn't it feel good? Another pain started in my left knee and I found myself grabbing rocks for support with every step.

About four miles down the trail, the sun was beginning to get through to me. My water supply was gone and my knees were killing me. I crawled into a small cave for shade to contemplate my future ... if I had one. My toes felt like they were coming through the end of my hiking boots. Surely, the three kids would be saying by this time, “Our mother has stretch marks over ninety percent of her body thanks to us. We're a family. All of you people can go down the river if you want, but we're going back on the trail and rescue our mother who has sacrificed so much for us.”

An hour passed before I sensed a vibration of sorts coming from the ground. It turned out to be a string of drag-in mules carrying supplies to the bottom of the canyon. I hitched a ride, thinking somewhere along the way I'd meet my family coming to search for me. Actually, my husband did get worried and brought water, but by this time I was on the back of a mule.

The kids were all on the raft. As I approached, I heard my daughter's mouth. “Mom's always late. She ruins everything.”

As I fell over the large rubber pontoon, the captain of the boat said, “You're the first person to ever start down the canyon on foot and end up on her—”

“Shut up and drive,” I said tiredly.

People who have never rafted down the Colorado River wonder what it is you do all day for a week on a boat that holds sixteen people.

Mostly, you float down a patch of brown river dwarfed by mile-high canyons of rock on either side. It is one of the most humbling, unforgettable experiences you will ever know as you ease by these stone cathedrals that turn from purples to reds to golds in the afternoon sun. Occasionally, you sweep through rapids of jagged rocks that sometimes drop the boat off into swirling foam for the ride of your life. From time to time you stop and explore caves and waterfalls and spot wild mustangs and burros that stare curiously at these outsiders. A swim in the Colorado is to say hello to hypothermia.

About three days out, a nice woman from Maine asked, “Do you have any children?”

I assured her I did and pointed to the boy lashed in place by ropes on the pontoon as far away from the group as he could get. Another boy was at the opposite end of the boat reading a comic book, and the third child was getting a serious tan. “And your husband?” she queried. I pointed him out.

“Oh my,” she exclaimed. “He's the one we see going to the Porta Potti every night in his bathrobe and bedroom slippers. I thought we were supposed to rough it.”

“Believe me when I tell you he is suffering.” I smiled.

She thought it was wonderful when families were as close as we were.

Every evening when we made camp, the ritual was the same. Everyone was responsible for putting up his own cot under the stars, waiting for the potties to be erected and for a waterfall to become available for showers. I tried to avoid excessive mothering. I really did. One night as I was in the Porta Potti, I heard a large hawk screeching across the sky and the voice of my daughter saying to a friend, “I have to go. I hear my mother calling.” I bit my tongue to keep from yelling, “I heard that! You're grounded until you give birth.”

My husband had to admit the food was great and the scenery breathtaking, but he was still fighting the primitive facilities. A good day for him was when he found a rock with an indentation in it for his biodegradable soap near a shower/waterfall.

On about the sixth night, we heard rumbles and saw dark clouds gathering ominously above us as we erected our cots. Someone got the bright idea to seek protection from the rain on the ledges of some nearby caves.

“Not me,” I said and positioned my cot in a barren patch of desert alone from the group. “There are bats in those caves and I'm not about to have fifty thousand of them part my hair.”

My son was humiliated. “Dad,” he whined, “Mom's acting weird again. Make her come in the cave like everyone else.”

There's something wrong with bats that I can't put my finger on. They're . . . they're engineered wrong. All wrong. They never stand on their feet like other mammals. They hang out. They always look like they never use a napkin. I hate that. And any mother with nipples in her armpits just isn't thinking. I felt safer in the open desert.

As I looked up at the black sky, I yelled out in the darkness to my husband, “Are you eating something?” (I knew he had brought his food stash.)

“I am eating dried apricots from my survival bag.”

“I'm starving.”

“You told me you didn't like anything with fur on it.”

“You're not going to share, are you?”

My response was his lips smacking in the dark.

I hoped the batteries burned out on his portable electric toothbrush.

On the last day, everyone pitched in and prepared to take everything out of the canyon we had brought in, from the large rubber rafts to a chewing gum wrapper. To the observer, our kids could have been returning from an orphans' picnic.

I did a lot of thinking about our children on that trip—especially about the wisdom of traveling with them.

My conclusion is, you can leave your children endowments, stocks, a moldy fur coat, and the family silverware, but you cannot pass on to them the memories that have contributed immeasurably to your life—your travels. It's a one-owner legacy, the one thing that goes with you when you go.

Parents think a lot about their legacy to their kids. What would they do with their money? One would take up residence in a Tower Records store, another would fill an entire house with cosmetics, and the other would buy a car that would never get any farther than the cement blocks it was hoisted on in the driveway. After that trip, we decided to spend their money for them by showing them the world. Let them amass their own riches.

We're not talking Brady Bunch here. We're a real family . . . remember? In Ireland, the two brothers had an argument over a bicycle, split, and didn't see each other for two weeks. In Hawaii, they learned by saying “Charge it to room 411,” they had the power of the universe.

In the African bush, one fell in the Zambezi River that was crawling with hippopotamus. One ran with the bulls through the narrow streets in Pamplona and told me later so I could have a heart attack in leisure.

My husband has me on film running behind a son who is being lifted over a Mexican bay in a parasail, yelling, “Why are you killing your mother?”

Their hotel bedrooms looked like Beirut, they were always the last ones to board the plane, and they used their passports for scratch pads for phone numbers, but somehow we made it.

If we have given them a legacy at all, I hope it is a desire to see the world and meet some of the people with whom they share this planet in peace.

If that were true, I would never again worry that they would end up with nothing.