A trip into my Past

Describe your most memorable vacation.

Last month I went back to the old country, Romania, on a humanitarian mission to help my aging mom.

Pretty soon after stepping inside her apartment, I realized two things.

One, she is no longer a mom. She’s now an old lady, who’s losing her mind to loneliness, despair and mental illness.

Two, I may not see her again in this life.

So, I did help her but since she wouldn’t let me clean up and fix her abode, I didn’t manage to do much.

Old people are set in their ways.

But my failing to fix my mom’s home also came with a few positive things.

One, I realized that hoarding and a lack of living discipline was in my genes, and that if I didn’t take things well in hand, I was going to end up like my mom.

Two, I neglected to heed my wife’s and daughter’s advice to fix myself before it was too late. So, I fessed up, apologized to them, and decided to grow up and become an adult. Well, I’m 43 so I guess later is better than never, eh.

So, I resolved to start packing all my stuff, and make it into a pile, and shred it, burn it, destroy it. As soon as I got back to Canada, I started acting on my plan of action.

I’m now more organized, decluttered, and yes, also gained a clarity of focus I never believed I’d have. Although my wife has been telling me this for some 17 years now. I must be a damn slow learner or something.

I’m decided to go back to school and change my chosen profession. I will rebuild myself as a new professional, whose career, whose life’s goal is now making it rain…with money.

I am making it my life’s mission to make enough money to secure a carefree existence for my family, and to shower my old friends with the attention they deserve for putting up with me.

And to think a month ago I was despondent that my mother’s living situation was going to prove a hard nut to crack. How badly I had anticipated the entire situation!

Little did I know how poorly my friends had managed to convey the urgency of the message: “You need to help your mom. She’s in a bad place and she needs your help. Come visit her!”

Even after coming to grips with the shock of discovering my mother living in a pigsty, a hovel worthy of the darkest misery that could ever be conceived by a romantic prose writer, I was still unsure of what to do, who to call, where to go first.

I ended up doing the hard work by myself, with only one new friend helping me out one day. Kosonom seipen, L., kosi! Korhasza e temetur, eh!

And that’s when and how I realized that my previous decision to lose weight by working out every day and stop eating like an animal, which I had taken 18 months before, was going to come in mighty handy.

Had I not lost weight and gained muscle as well as the resilience to bear life’s struggles on my now manly shoulders, I wouldn’t have been able to physically help my mom, or even bear the entire episode with the fortitude I displayed.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I cried. Oh God, how I cried! I shed so many tears I think I’m going to be good for the next five years.

But after realizing crying was for suckers, and action is for winners, I decided to take action and make the best freaking Marguerita with the lemons life gave me.

So although there’s been many vacations of note, the latest proved to be the most memorable for it reshaped me into the man I am today. And yes, my mom was instrumental in helping me overcome my reluctance to become an adult.

Thank you, mom, for giving me the opportunity to grow into the man I am today.