North to Alaska (and bread pudding)
There comes a time in a man’s life when he realizes that he must
take his mother on vacation. I decided to take my mother to
Alaska.
North to Alaska (and bread pudding)
There comes a time in a man’s life when he realizes that he must take his mother on vacation. I decided to take my mother to Alaska.
She had never gone on a vacation. She raised two kids on her own, then worked, then cared for her own mother. She is 69.
I told mom we were going on a cruise to Alaska. I told my big sister it would be best if she also came along.
“If you don’t come with us I might throw mom overboard,” I told my big sister.
So the three of us flew to Seattle and then hopped on a large boat.
Things went smoothly until I attempted to lift mom’s suitcase onto her bed. The suitcase was the size of a camper shell.
“Is there anything in your apartment that you didn’t put in the suitcase?” I asked. She gave this some thought.
“I think I left some roast beef in the refrigerator,” she said.
The three of us would share a room. I took the sofa bed. I will vacation with my mother, but I will not sleep with her. After unpacking – this took me four minutes and my mother 44 hours – we decided to eat.
On the way to the dining room my mother fell down the stairs. She was like a bowling ball plopping on each step. It was slow motion. But she wasn’t injured. You don’t get to be 69 without being tough. She limped to the dining room and we began a week of eating 12 meals a day, with dessert. I ate bread pudding 53 times. This is what you do on a cruise. Others ate 12 meals a day, with 12 after-meal drinks.
We didn’t drink. We went on “excursions.” When the ship parallel parked at a port, we signed up for excursions. We would canoe to a glacier, take a walk to try and find bears, and ride a “zip line” cable suspended above the rain forest. These seemed like good ideas when we signed up.
For the canoe trip, we put on rain gear. My mom put her pants and suspenders on backward. It took four of us to get them turned around. The pants were 10 inches too long. With her knit hat on, mom looked like a teen-aged boy at a Yukon mall.
We paddled to a glacier. The water was 31 degrees, so I told mom if she fell in to try and keep moving until we figured out a way to get her back into the canoe. On the way to the glacier we passed an iceberg – a giant hunk of ice that broke off the glacier – and perched at the top was a bald eagle. We passed silently and the huge bird appeared annoyed but didn’t fly off. It was most excellent.
Mom had a great time at the glacier lake. It took four of us to get her rainpants off.
Our excursion at the next port was a “bear walk.” About a dozen of us would be guided to a river where bears fish. The guide told us that if a bear attacked we shouldn’t run because bears are very fast. I told my mom that if a bear attacked we could read aloud minutes from a county supervisors’ meeting, a move certain to drive off any creature.
We didn’t see bears, but salmon leaped and eagles flew and the river and plains were stunning in their beauty. Mom said it was plenty good enough.
Our last excursion was to “zip” through an Alaskan rain forest. We climbed to a high platform, were attached to steel cables, and slid at 30 mph or more to another platform. Below were trees and streams.
On the first line, mom forgot to hit the brakes and almost knocked our guide off the platform. She apologized and he told her it was OK, but to remember to brake. On one of the platforms, we looked down to a stream below and watched a black bear catch salmon. It was grand.
When we returned to headquarters to take off our zip-line gear, the guides said mom was “the MVP,” and our group cheered wildly.
On our trip we saw glaciers, whales, killer whales, eagles, salmon, icebergs, and more. We ate 12 meals a day and approximately 159 servings of bread pudding. Mom shopped. My sister walked three miles of circles per day around the ship’s deck. When the urge to exercise struck, I reclined and stared at breathtaking landscape.
We asked mom if she liked her vacation.
“That was great,” she said. “Where should we go next?”
I told her we’d figure something out. We had time; it would take three or four weeks for her to unpack that suitcase.
