“Yesterday afternoon we played bingo in the ship’s lounge. Actually, it felt like we made a donation to the Bingo Foundation of America,” Mom wrote in her red leather travel diary while on a cruise through Alaska’s Inside Passage. “After dinner, they put on a slide show. Talk about a mob scene. The audience was right out of Port Authority Bus Terminal.”
Mom’s stinging wit and stiletto-sharp observations, written in her identifiable sloped scrawl, kindled memories of the amusing, bright 79-year-old woman who died 26 years ago. In photographs on my desk, I see her face and even remember the purple blouse she wore that day. So much else is fuzzy.
For years, the travel diary sat on a shelf in my upstairs hall closet, along with a stack of Mom’s daily journals that my sister Robin found when she was cleaning out my parents’ house. I just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, read them. But recently, on the anniversary of Mom’s death, I had a hunger to “hear” her voice and “feel” the potent personality I still miss.
Mom wrote daily entries while traveling independently with Dad in their 60s, and later, on organized group trips. She faithfully recorded the date, place, and weather — in Bangkok, Banff, Rome, Jerusalem, even on barge trips through France and on paddle-wheelers down the Mississippi. At the end of every journey, she wrote the identical words, “This trip was one of the best we’ve ever had. Where next?”
In Hong Kong she purchased a Louis Vuitton purse for me and recorded, “Completely faux but Val will love this and carry it off.” (I did!) An entry describing her first trip to Italy noted, “On the bus to Lake Garda. Stopped at a ‘rest spot.’ Determined to use as few of those places as possible for the rest of the trip. God awful.”
Words that touched my heart revealed her deep love for my father and us four kids. In 1983, on Dad’s birthday, from “wet Skagway with wild turbulence,” she wrote, “I have no gift or even a card, just my undying love. He is so dear to me.” In Jasper National Park (“intermittent sunshine”), she thought of my sister and brother: “Sometime today Robin will fly west to join Robert in Alaska. Makes me so happy. Reminds me of the good old days when we were together as a family.”
There were ho-hum entries too, like when she described washing laundry in the hotel bathroom sink. And I was tickled to be reminded of our mutual magazine preferences: “Brought a pile of ‘New Yorkers’ and ‘Vanity Fairs’ for the long flight to Singapore.”
As she nudged into her mid-70s, her enthusiasm never waned. In Venice, she wrote, “I got up earlier than I care to because I don’t want to miss a minute.” Page after page unveiled the passionate wanderlust of a mother who’d waved each of her four children off to Europe before applying for her own passport. I recall her telling me, “Dad and I stood on the pier, throwing confetti streamers and waving at you as the S.S. Groote Beer headed down the Hudson. You were on your way to Norway, and we were so delighted for you!”
Back then it never occurred to me how many sacrifices they made to pay for our trips abroad, stifling their own travel hopes. They knew how to economize — they were, after all, the couple who’d hitchhiked from New York City to Milwaukee to see Dad’s family shortly after they were married in 1936. Years before she bought her own traveler’s checks for her first visit to Italy, Mom bought us kids each $200 worth for our summers abroad.
While we were away, I know the highlight of Mom’s day was slitting open a pale blue, lightweight aerogram postmarked Olden I Nordfjord, Norway, or Quimper, France. Today, reading her red leather travel diary, I recognize her joy. And I hear you, Mom, loud and clear.
Valerie Marier is a writer in Maine. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.
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My mother’s old travel diary took me on journeys abroad and to the past - The Boston Globe
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