Niki pulled to a stop in front of her sister’s house. I took one look at the jungle growing on the front yard hillside along the sidewalk and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!” A list of things I wanted to accomplish for Tammie before leaving on our scheduled vacation marched through my mind.  

I had figured that my vacation started three hours earlier, when Niki picked me up to drive me to Tammie’s house in the Twin Cities. But technically, the vacation Tammie and I had planned wouldn’t really start until Friday afternoon when we went to the airport. Until then, my daughter had at least 16 more work hours to complete. I wanted to spend that time being useful.

 Within an hour of arriving at her house, I’d changed into work clothes and found a shrub lopper behind a chair on Tammie’s porch. Earlier this summer, she had told me that wild grapevine, invasive saplings and weeds had overtaken the steep, rocky, and hard to manage incline in her front yard. She hadn’t exaggerated.   

I cut down sumac, oak and maple saplings, and tall weeds. Grapevines had reached up into the lower branches of a mature maple tree next to the house and were strangling everything growing nearby.  Niki pitched in and dragged away the unwanted brush.

Thanks to all the chores I did for Tammie, time passed quickly. Friday afternoon finally arrived. My daughter signed out of work, finished packing, and called for a cab. We moved our luggage in stages to the porch, to the front steps and finally to the sidewalk just in time for the punctual arrival of our ride to the airport.

At the airport, thousands of people were rushing to various check points and departure gates. The intense hustle and bustle made me feel anxious and unsure of what we had to do next. Apparently, unfazed by the sense of hurry-scurry and the complexity of travel that I felt, Tammie confidentially printed a tag for a checked suitcase and put it on a conveyor belt. She guided us through the TSA security check point at which our carry-on cases and purses had to be x-rayed.   

That morning, we’d eaten a modest breakfast, but nerves had made me feel uninterested in lunch. On the way to our departure gate, we bought kambocha to drink. It wasn’t until we were on the airplane and in the air that I realized that I finally felt hungry. Airlines that provide short, four-hour trips within the United States do not provide passengers with meals. Instead, they hand out small bags of pretzels and offer the passengers their choice of nonalcoholic drinks. Small lunch boxes can be purchased for an extra fee, though.

It was while eating olives, hummus and chips with Tammie that I realized that up until earlier that afternoon, I’d been enjoying my mother’s vacation: a time spent happily helping my daughter. Sharing the boxed lunch marked the beginning of our cruise ship adventure where I needed my daughter to guide me like a child through unfamiliar places like the airport and the pier where our ship was docked. Our roles had reversed for this vacation, and she was now acting as a mother to me. I smiled and relaxed into the airplane seat.