Fontaine Claire - Have mother, will travel: a mother and daughter discover themselves, each other, and the world

For our own mothers, and for all mothers

CONTENTS

Passport with extra photos

Visas and immunization records

Travel insurance, important numbers

Video camera, camera, tape recorder

Batteries, cords, adapters, converter

Flashlight, pens, notebooks

International cell phone, language translator

$800 cash (50 singles), credit cards

Emergency contact info, freq flyer #s

Money belt, empty tote

Light jacket and pocket poncho

2 capris, 1 pair shorts

3 pants, 1 nice

7 tops: 2 long sleeve, 3 tees, 2 tanks

1 long skirt for Muslim countries

Cardigan

1 scarf and 1 pashmina

2 shoes: walking, sandal

Undies, bras, jammies

Swimsuit, sarong, flip-flops

Makeup and toiletries

Eye mask and earplugs

Travel towel, duct tape, sewing kit

Portable laundry line, Woolite packets

Tamiflu, antimalarial, chlorine tabs

First-aid kit, sanitizer

Antidiarrheal, Dramamine, aspirin

Medication, extra glasses and contacts

Sunglasses, sunblock (SPF 50)

Bug spray30% DEET

Vitamins, PowerBars

Passport

Visa

Mother

O ne word, Mia schistosomiasis .

An occupational hazard of writing is research; you look up the risk of eating sushi and five hours later youre an expert on the Loa loa eyeworm and the E. japonica flatworms that are teeming in rivers like the one my grown daughter, my only child, wants to plunge into today.

Im holding the bathroom stall door closed for Mia at Kuala Gandah, an elephant rescue sanctuary located in the rain forest of Malaysias Pahang region, where weve come to ride the elephants and learn about their rescue program. They allow a handful of visitors to ride the big gals into the muddy river and cavort with them as their handlers scrub them down. My devil-may-care daughter is among the select.

Look, Im a big risk-taker, an intrepid traveler, but I stop at taking home larvae as souvenirs.

You dont even have to swallow it, I whisper loudly, they bore right through your skin and make a beeline for your liver.

She comes out, rolling her eyes. There are fifty other travelers here, Mother. Do you see anyone else worried about it? By the way, these are probably the only sit-down flush toilets well see all day, Id try to go if I were you.

No one who gets it worried about it before they got it! It lives in rivers in the tropics. That, I point emphatically out the window, is a river, and this is the tropics. What are you not getting here?

Mom, if youre going to be like this the whole trip, the only pain Ill have in my butt wont be from travelers diarrhea. You dont avoid London because people get hit by buses! How many opportunities will I get to swim with elephants?!

I follow her out of the welcome center to a clearing in the jungle where a group of people, mostly stout, sturdy Brits, are wandering down a dirt trail through the dense flora toward the elephant area.

She hurries ahead to catch up, with me in tow trying to figure out a way to do what every mother of an adult daughter does when left with no recoursebribe, threaten, or frighten.

Exactly thirteen-point-nine percent of the field police officers of this country have tested positive for it! I call out after her.

The Brits turn to look at me, not sure if they should be worried about the Malaysian police force or me.

Mia gives me a surprised look. How the hell did you remember that ?

Given my lack of sleep and estrogen, it is impressive. Actually, I have no idea why that stuck, but its true. And dont swear.

She just shakes her head and scoots around the bend so she doesnt miss her opportunity. I personally know people who struggle with parasites decades after trips to places like this. But shes twenty-five; I cant stop her. Once upon a time, when she was under eighteen, I had options.

M y moms hardly one to talk about parasites. The first thing she did when we arrived in China was drink three glasses of waterfrom the tap. Its not every day one gets to swim with elephants. In all fairness, however, I should probably add that her being overprotective doesnt exactly come from out of the blue.

I was on my way home from work when I got the call. The one that would make me quit my job, sublet my apartment, and take off for the great unknown alongside my mother. The call that led to the book youre now reading, an around-the-world adventure thats intended to entertain, educate, and, above all, explore the changing dynamic between mother and adult daughter.

But before you pack your three-ounce liquids, buy a trashy magazine youd never otherwise read, and settle in for a cross-continental flight, allow me to hit the pause button. This isnt the first journey my mom and I have taken together, and you might need some background information so that, for example, if I refer to spending some of my teenage years locked up in the Czech Republic, it wont come from left field.

If youve read our 2006 memoir, Come Back: A Mother and Daughters Journey Through Hell and Back, this will be a brief refresher, and if you havent, well, you may want that $10 cocktail because it gets a bit intense. Come Back was like a darker version of The Runaway Bunny; baby bunny hops away from home, mama rabbit follows in dogged pursuit until her runaway offsprings back home for good.

I wasnt a baby so much as I was an extremely self-destructive teenager, and my mothers version of dogged involved putting her little bunny in a lockdown boot-camp school for nearly two years. In the Czech Republic. In a place where (for the first several months) you ate food with no condiments, bid shaving and makeup adieu, communicated with the outside world solely through letters to your parents, and spoke only during group therapy or to ask questions in class. And when the school in the Czech Republic closed, I was sent to a similar facility in Montana, a part of the world where She Thinks My Tractors Sexy was then a hit song.

Granted, my behavior warranted it: dropping out of high school, repeatedly running away, heavily abusing hard drugs, felony drug charges. My relationship with my mom had shattered, we alternated between not speaking and big fights, and by my last disappearance we were completely estranged. She tried everything she knew of: traditional therapy, the psych ward, an alternative school, my aunts house in rural Indiana (thinking cows and fresh air would be more wholesome than L.A. was erroneous; in small towns, theres often the 4-H and the other H, heroin). Hearing about the school in the Czech Republic was a miracle to her. Everyone, of course, thought she was crazy, but my grandmother is from that region, so it wasnt quite so alien, it was pre-euro and therefore a fraction of the cost of stateside treatment programs, and, mainly, shed have sent me to Mars if she thought itd help me.

No sane teen would trade drivers ed or prom for draconian rules and confrontational therapy, but, considering how many people I knew who ended up dead or in prison, Im glad she did because the school saved my life. My behavior stemmed from being sexually abused by my biological father when I was a small child (anyone who thinks small kids will forget about abuse sorely underestimates how durable a trauma it is), and over the course of my time there I healed from it, and became accountable for the role I played in my self-destruction. I also reconnected with my mom and my stepfather, Paul, whom I now consider and call Dad.