I should have known how it would be. When she was two she and her sister spent the night at a friend’s place up the road. The next morning I could hear her all the way down the hill. As she burst though the back door she was crying with rage and loss ‘Daddy wouldn’t let me to stay longer’
At just 20 years old she left without a backward glance laden with all she would need for a year in Mexico. As if we had any idea and that was just about the material bits and pieces.
The next 36 hours were full of self-recrimination. ‘Why didn’t I tell her…I forgot to tell her…What if she..?
What if I…? What if they…?’
The previous 20 years of feeling good about good enough parenting dissipated under the weight of all the what ifs.
She was to arrive at Mexico City airport at midnight – the witching hour. What if Juan the taxi driver failed to materialise? And who was Juan anyway? A contact of the Student Travel guy who was to be rung, who was to appear and carry her off to the backpackers (coven?) returning her to the bus station the next morning for the final journey north.
I slept with the mobile thinking of my own mother who had no such luxury when I left without a backward glance all those years ago. But when the call came in the wee hours I did wonder if it wasn’t better not to know.
‘They’ve lost my luggage and I don’t know what to do’ click-silence-ring back-silence. Her sister rings ‘did you get the call?’ ‘Yes’ – ring back- silence. There was nothing to be done. Surely my good enough parenting would prevail and maybe Juan would help. I slept uneasily.
Another 24 hours went by. (not as long as the month my mother waited to hear from me, trekking in Nepal.) At last an email. It had been an epic journey but she made it through an unscheduled stop in Hawaii for a sick child, the lost luggage crisis and a blood nose on the bus. The connecting flight was achieved, the luggage found (Juan did help) and a nice lady had tissues for her blood nose.
But it wasn’t so much this that gave me heart as the story of being driven through the prostitutes’ barrio ‘so interesting mum’ with the women laughing and chatting round glowing braziers. I was impressed that she’d negotiated the travel ‘crises’ but more impressed by her ability to remain curious and non-judgemental about her new world.
And this ’embrace all adventures’ attitude continued through a year that was so long for me and in the end so short-seeming for her.
I missed her and I relished every communication. Many made me weep with laughter. Many involved thoughtful commentary on her new place and people.
I discovered in her a kind of exuberant innocence which kept her safe even in the so-called Badlands of Mexico. Even being bitten by a scorpion made for a great story. ‘When the taxi driver heard I’d been bitten he did a screaming uturn and took me to the local hospital which was amazing. They didn’t even have computers and they laughed at me for my short non-Mexican name.’
There was one very urgent text though. ‘How does one roast a potato?’ I replied suggesting it might be good to roast more then one potato at once but I began to think that if this was all that was being asked of me then maybe the good enough parenting had worked.
What does a good enough mother hope for her child? I think the writer, Katherine Patterson captures it for me. ‘There are only two things we can give our children. One of them is roots. The other is wings’