Long live the mother-daughter vacation
Photo-Illustration: by the Cut; Photos courtesy of the subject. I thought the boat would be the breaking point. Twin-engined with a propeller like a bunch of knives, it bobbed in the turquoise shallows of Hodges Bay, a resort on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The boarding process required kicking off your shoes, wading into knee-deep water, hoisting yourself onto the stern, swinging over your legs, and finding your footing in the hull.
We took our first trip together when I was 14 months old, flying from Bangalore, India, where I had drooled through my first birthday, to Newark. My dad, who had traveled with us to India, needed to get back to the office, which meant Padma had to navigate 24 hours of travel alone. According to her, it was a breeze; I slept the whole time.
England, 1999: a solar eclipse that, for religious and superstitious reasons I fail to understand, my mother didn’t want to lay eyes on. We spent our final hours in London in a tiny hotel room with the curtains drawn. Eventually, I decided that if I could anticipate the breaking point, I could stop the next nadir from happening because we had to keep traveling. My father died in 2009; after I waded through the molten lava of anger I had about his sudden, unexpected passing, it occurred to me that if I didn’t take my mom on vacation, no one would. I’m an only child. She has no immediate family in the U.S. If I visit her in New Jersey, I regress to 16 and she attempts to feed me every 15 minutes.
Constantly attempting to forestall disaster, it turns out, can produce blind spots. What I did not see coming: my mom befriending the team behind an Antigua-based animal-rescue organization, Flew the Coop, who invited us to a party on Prickly Pear Island and declared her the “MVP of the weekend.” Or that after two piña coladas, she’d gaze up at the sky, point out Orion’s Belt, press her cheek against my shoulder, and say, “I’m so glad you brought me here.
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