All About My Mother

Machu Picchu, Peru
December 19, 2001

Mom and I stand in front of the Palace on Wheels after the "holi" festival of color in India.

Mom on the Palace on Wheels, where we train traveled through Rajastan, India in early 2003. Photo by Michael Seto.

"It's OK, Mike. I'll just sit here and rest a minute."

My mom patted the rock supporting her and smiled.

"Fine. I'll rest too. Just remember to take it slow, we're up pretty high." I stood to the side of the trail and drank some water from my bottle.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be just fine."

I worried anyway. After all, my legs burned and my lungs heaved trying to pull oxygen from the air at 7,000 foot. If I felt knackered, surely my 62-year old Mom MUST be tired! We sat about halfway up a steep hill set just behind Machu Picchu, which overlooked the entire site. A restored Incan building of some type clung to the hill another 600 vertical feet above us.

My mom flew in from the US earlier this week, always wanting to visit the mysterious Incan city of Machu Picchu. Now we stood here together, enjoying our second day at the city, tucked away on a hillside so remote it lay undiscovered until 1911.

She studied Spanish for the last nine months and her vocabulary well exceeded my "travel Spanglish." Incan and Mayan history fascinated her, so she spent time learning about their cultures, traditions and history; peppering our guide Claudio with amazing questions yesterday.

I enjoyed my mom's company, as nearly three months passed since I departed my childhood home in San Jose for Mexico.

She stood up and said, "OK, I'm ready." We worked carefully up the dirt and rock switchback trail, hewn into the nearly vertical hillside.

I stood balanced below my mom, positioned to catch her and arrest any fall. A foolish notion given my own tired state, but my chivalrous nature did not allow for any deterrence. This was my MOM for goodness sake.

Each time she caught me doing this my Mom would admonish me, "I'm fine Mike. If I can't make it, I'll just stop."

My mom loves to travel. Before I departed home, she covered our dining table with brochures, Conde Nast magazines, and guidebooks, comparing itineraries and destinations. Already an accomplished traveler with probably 45 countries under her belt, Mom relished the opportunity to go to Peru, just needing a travel companion.

My dad, he loves to watch TV. His favorite vacation is a nice long cruise with four buffets per day - preferably Chinese food. So Mom works hard to bridge the gap and design suitable vacations for both. She jumped at the chance to join me in Peru for Cuzco, the Amazon jungle and, of course, Machu Picchu. Dad was finishing up his last semester teaching engineering at San Jose State and said he'd stay home and take care of the cats.

For me, it offered a chance to spend a week with Mom, a family vacation. Something I had been absent from since my 1983 (I was 16) childhood trip to Hong Kong and Hawaii. Seventeen years without a true vacation with any one of my family. My rebellious college attitude combined with the Marine Corps ensured my exile.

So for a week I will get to stay in nice hotels (with hot water) and get transfers to the airport and a private guide to show us around. OK. I just hoped my independent "finding myself" nature could handle 170 hours (Ok, I forgot about sleep) with one of my parents. Having Mom show up to PTA meetings, award ceremonies, graduations and weddings was one thing; eating, sleeping, flying, and everything else together was another.

Being away from home from college onward, never allowed me to color my parents in-between the lines, to learn more about them as people. To see them as I now exlored myself, searching for a meaning to my life and the world around me. What did they discover? What did they dream about? Fear? What were their joys and disappointments? I never knew any of these things, as a child and even still as an adult.

This vacation allowed me to see my mom as a REAL person. Some friends of mine possess amazing relationships with their parents, treating them like best friends or soulmates. Me, brought up in the best Asian tradition, gave them loyalty, fealty, and respect (though no grandkids yet). For the longest time of my life, I only saw my Mom and Dad as my Mom and Dad; not real people with their own hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities and faults.

A child, for good reason, sees parents as omnipotent beings for many formative years; and this often carries over even through the rebelliousness of adolescence. College and the USMC took me away from home and for years I failed to enlarge the picture of my parents, my understanding of them, my empathy for them.

Prior to this, I only received glimpses from afar, like spotting an animal in the jungle. A rustle here, a phone call there, a letter or email. A jumbled mosaic, which I can try to interpolate. I could try and analyze my parents, try and figure out in neoclassical "lay-down-on-the-couch" psychology who they are and why I am who I am.

I could try to figure why I was an overachiever. What weakness did I hide through academic honors? What vulnerability hid behind the facade of the Marine officer? What insecurity bred behind the Wall Street material success? What drives me to seek something by travelling around the world?

But I don't do that. I don't feel any particular need to do that. Not right now. Perhaps I squander a chance that may not present itself again. Perhaps not.

I know deep in my heart that I love my parents (and my sisters)...unconditionally. They may feel different sometimes, but I know that they know this.

I love them just the way they are. For they are just like me.

"Ahhh, finally," Mom breathed a sigh of relief. Setting her pack to one side, she sat down and drank some water. Sitting on the edge of a cliff, we looked over the ruins of Machu Picchu 1,000 feet below us. The sun shone through the late morning clouds in golden rays, illuminating parts of the mountains surrounding the mysterious Incan city.

Now I saw Mom as an explorer; teaching and learning about the world, always helping others, compassionate, understanding, and deeply philosophical, though she may not describe herself that way.

I realized I am just like her.

She gazed at the sun striped valley below us, "Boy, isn't that just beautiful."

"It sure is, Mom. It sure is."

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Postscript

Don't think my Dad didn't travel either. He and I share noodles in a famous Hong Kong diner, Winter 2002. My Dad loves to spend time in Hong Kong, where he grew up.