The one thing I always understood my parents didn't agree on was travel. He didn't care if he went anywhere. She didn't care; she would go anywhere.
My father was a devout Catholic but my mother liked to say he wouldn't walk to the corner to see the Pope pass by. That was an exaggeration. He'd walk anywhere. It was getting him into other conveyances that posed the problem.
She did manage to talk him into a car on occasion. I believe the longest vacation was to Cape Cod which I suspect she probably finessed by positioning the trip as a treat for their pre-teen daughter (me) who had a crush on the very cute President from Massachusetts (JFK). The longest add-on I recall was to Niagara Falls which she insisted was just around the corner when we dropped my brother off at Cornell. In her defense, it was only 165 miles from Ithaca to Niagara Falls. However, although there were interstate routes available, I don't recall being on any. Guess who was in charge of the map?
My father was a good sport about road trips. When they opened the Cape May-Lewes ferry, they were there within the week. When they opened the Chesapeake Tunnel/Bridge, they were there within the month. The voice in Field of Dreams that said, "If you build it they will come" was talking about my mother. But only if my father drove her. She never got a license.
She did fly with my father on the occasional business trip but, until my brother moved to Bermuda and sent my parents plane tickets, I don't think she ever got farther than Chicago or Boston. But I am sure she was happy to go to those cities. They were somewhere else.
Not all business travel involved planes. At one point my father's job required him to visit twenty-two small towns in eastern Pennsylvania. Scranton was the biggest. My father only had to start a sentence, "Would you like to take a ride to . . . ." She'd be in car. I rode along and she would make the day a special occasion. We were going to the best place on earth. Somewhere else.
My mother raised me to think travel was the most important thing in life. My only goals in life involved being somewhere else. Living in different cities. Traveling to different cities. I got to do both. Probably in excess. She did not.
Sometimes when business travel got exhausting, I would feel as if I was doing it for her. My mother's daughter would never spend a night at the Tokyo airport on a layover. No, I took the bus to the Imperial Hotel (she loved hotels) and got up early on a Sunday morning to spend a few hours touring Tokyo. When dragging myself through the Imperial Palace Gardens, I believe I actually spoke aloud when I said, "Can I go home now, Mother?" But the effort was worth it if for no other reason than when asked if I've been to Japan, I get to say "yes, but only for the day."
My mother would have approved of my day trip to Tokyo. She might have been a bit jealous. We suspected she even envied my brother's Army deployment to Korea (not the tourist destination in the early sixties that it is now).
My sister actually came up with a solution to my parent's travel issue. For their 25th wedding anniversary, "we" gave them a cruise to the Caribbean and South America. I think in the end, they both enjoyed it. She got to go to new places and he got to sit in a deck chair and read. I think if they had lived into retirement, cruises might have resolved their issue. Sadly, they didn't.
