Most of the time, I try not to think about my mother.
My memories of her are bundled together in a single heap, making it impossible to retrieve only one.
bring up the door of that closet and they all fall out.
The last dinner: She seems so strongI believe she’s actually getting better.
My way of dealing with the annual emotional overload is to skip town.
But following a series of predictable European vacations, I decided it was time to try something new.
I was too late for the Parthenon.
In the snapshot, she’s a kaleidoscope of colorred hair, yellow shirt, purple jacket.
The photo has now faded, but it still seems impossibly bright to me.
Maybe that’s why going to Machu Picchu to mark her passing seemed right.
She visited one ruin, I would visit another.
With three months to go before the trip, I began to buy gear, a surprisingly giddy experience.
Despite my mother’s best efforts to make me athletic, I’ve never been a particularly outdoorsy person.
(It’s hard not to feel self-important when you’re buying water-purification tablets.)
Our guide, Jaime, tells us that the hardest stretch lies ahead of us.
They clap upon seeing me, an act of kindness and esprit de corps, but also condescending.
I assume the descent will be easier on my lungs, and it is.
But it’s harder on my knees and ankles, which ache.
And the terrain is precarious: The rocks are loose and frequently shift under my feet.
I take it slowly, like everything else.
While hiking the Inca Trail, you have to go at your own pace.
To move faster is impossible; to move more slowly is intolerable.
Sometimes, tourists from other groups sweep by.
Periodically, one guide or the other doubles back to check on my progress.
For one thing, it’s that anniversary again.
She is with me on the mountain, as is my closet full of vivid memories.
I find myself thinking about the goodhow proud this trip would have made her.
Imagine, her unathletic, unadventurous daughter in the middle of the Andes with a bamboo walking stick.
I picture her calling me to ask, momlike, if I’ve broken in my trail shoes.
(Of course I’d lie and say yes.)
I apologize for not understandingor not allowing myself to understandhow sick she was.
I gripe about my unflattering hiking pants, the dust that has lodged itself permanently inside my nose.
The sound of her voice propels me forward.
Machu Picchu itself has lost its meaning.
Chris takes my hand as my friend snaps a photograph.
All around us, tourists and hikers are getting in and out of the way.
Other groups nearby are hearing the same story, and the history lesson echoes off the stone walls.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of subject
