It all started with a casual, if sentimental, road trip through some of Colorado’s most charming locales: Buena Vista, Crestone, Salida. It wasn’t long before Mamo and I were backpacking abroad: Rome, Mumbai, Beijing, Cairo, Istanbul, London.
For whatever reason, I found wanderlust before most of my family. So it made sense when Mamo — our nickname for my now-78-year-old mom, Maureen — asked me to road-trip the state’s Western Slope. The trip seemed like another fun weekend at the time, but I later learned that those four days were life-altering in the best of ways.
Mom and I talked and talked, grabbed late-night pizzas, soaked in remote hot springs, braved mountain passes in blizzards, sat in ashrams, hiked to stupas and experienced inexplicable spirituality and natural beauty. She showed me her favorite spots from her 30s, and she pointed to where she’d like her ashes spread one day. We laughed, and we connected in ways we never had as adults.
We were always besties, but that trip sealed an even deeper connection than that of mother and son.
Not more than a year after the Colorado trip I got the call. Mamo had been rigorously studying the art of the Italian Renaissance. She’d found an agency that took seniors on tours, she said, but the thought of my then 70-year-old mother on a tour bus pecked at my soul.
“Let’s go,” I said before even thinking. And a few months later we were spending the day in London with my buddy Jim before hopping a discount flight to Rome. Trains to Florence and Siena, Viareggio and Venice, Naples and Sorrento. I’d been there before, but seeing those frescos and sculptures through her wise, familiar eyes was out-of-this-world cool.
We traveled well together and existed peacefully in small spaces, pension rooms and train cabins. I’m pretty level and easy, traits I surely got from her. We’d see other grown men and women traveling with their parents, and it looked more like a chore. Meanwhile, Mamo and I were cracking up, finishing our second bottle of wine at dinner and drunk-dialing my siblings in Colorado.
We lovingly called my sister Kit and brother Sean suckers for being at work. We told them they had to come on the next trip.
Over the next six or seven years Mamo and I continued getting around. Three weeks in India. A week in China. Three weeks in Turkey. Two in Egypt. Every time we’d return home I’d tell my siblings and friends: “It was the best trip I’ve ever taken.” Our adventures really did get better and better. The Great Wall on a brisk day blew our minds — and calves. But the caves of Aurangabad put that, even, to shame.
Then came
and the perfect desolation of Siwa Oasis, just 30 miles from the Libyan border. And a trip through ancient Ephesus, sprawling Istanbul, modern Ankara, sacred Konya, glitzy Antalya and inspiring Cappadocia served as a reminder of how lucky we were.
These travels are among the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given, so much so that I’ve told Kit and Sean that they’re crazy if they don’t make some epic plans with her.
Mamo e-mailed last week with an itinerary: Sean and Mom’s Alaskan cruise next year stops in Ketchikan. Kit and Mamo have been loosely “planning” a Paris trip for five years. Until then, I’ll continue to outline the book I’m working on. It’s about seeing the world with my best friend and mother, to whose spirit for adventure and thirst for knowledge I owe everything in my life.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394, rbaca@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bruvs
