What would you do if your daughter announced that she’d just bought a one-way ticket to Manila . . . ? This is a memoir of my experience with my Mom when I decided to “hit the road” . . .

It’s April 1st, 1979 and I’ve been traveling through Southeast Asia for seven months. Some would call me a “hippie backpacker.” I’m not a hippie, but I look like one. My hair, a fashionable curly perm when I left home last Labor Day, is grown out and sun-bleached. My wardrobe consists of two flowered skirts, six cotton shirts, blue jeans for colder elevations and pink rubber flip-flops. My batik sarong purchased in Ko Samoi in southern Thailand does triple duty as sleepwear, swimsuit cover-up and sleeping pad on the hard wooden berths of an overnight Indian train.

My backpack is borrowed from Josh, a surfer dude I met in Bangkok who was headed back to California. The suitcase and matching shoulder tote, filled with the wardrobe of mix-and-match polyester coordinates suggested by the conventional guidebooks, were shipped home months ago.

My journey is anything but conventional. It is vastly different from what I’d expected and certainly nothing like what I’d described to my parents last summer after I got my passport and a one-way ticket to Manila.

“Why on earth are you going to Asia?” Mom asked.

“I’ll be traveling with Barbara.” I assured her. Barbara was my girlfriend who lived down the street in Saginaw, Michigan. She’d been a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines for two years. Like me, she came from a sensible, blue-collar family. Mom liked her.

“Where are you going?” Mom continued. “How will you get around?”

“We’ll visit a bunch of countries,” I replied. “Everything’s really cheap.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“About four months.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It’s not dangerous, Mom.”

“What if you get sick? Do you need shots? What if there’s trouble?”

“I have chloroquine tablets to prevent malaria and I’m getting a gamma globulin shot for hepatitis. I’ll be fine.”

“But how will we hear from you? How will you stay in touch? How will I know you’re okay?”

“I’ll write often and call you collect once in a while.”

She nodded halfheartedly. She wasn’t convinced.

I wasn’t asking for her permission. I knew that would never happen. I didn’t need advice. I graduated from college but was living back at home, which was NOT supposed to happen. I didn’t have a boyfriend or a decent job, but I did have some money saved and, God knows, I had plenty of time. I had read The New Assertive Woman. This was my life and I was going, whether she liked it or not!

I kissed Muttsie goodbye. Mom and Dad drove me to the airport in Saginaw. They tried to mask their concern and apprehension. I tried to conceal my nervousness and trepidation. It’s a small airport and we had lots of time. Too much time. “How hot will it be in Manila?” asked Dad.

“Really hot and muggy,” I answered. “It’s close to the equator.”

I glanced at my mother. She wasn’t listening. She was a million miles away.

“Did you hear about the Tigers game last night?” Dad continued. “They clobbered the Twins.”

“That’s really good, Dad. Do you think they have a shot at the pennant?”

Finally, it was time to board. “Good-bye, honey.” said Dad as he kissed me. “Have fun. And whatever you do, don’t join one of those cults.”

Mom forced a smile. “Call us when you get there.”

I hate goodbyes. I hugged my dad first. Then Mom. She felt stiff. They watched me cross the tarmac and heft my navy blue shoulder tote up the stairs to the plane. I waived at them in the window. Only my father waved back.

Clearly Mom was upset.

I didn’t know the extent of my mother’s fear until I learned that, after 30 years as a housewife and mother, she went right out and got a job. It was a part-time job stuffing the Sunday Saginaw News with advertisements from K-Mart and Kroger’s. Unbelievable.

While I was in Malaysia, I applied for a student ID card. The application asked for “Mother’s Occupation.” I wrote “Insert Technician.”

In New Delhi today, I go to the General Post Office. The postal clerk hands over a fat bundle of letters. Four of them are from Mom. I seek out the perfect place to read. Across the street, I sat down on a little patch of scrubby grass.

“I made four loaves of zucchini bread for the Altar Society bake sale.” “Aunt Mary is moving out of the old house on East Side.” “Mrs. Kowals had an accident on Brockway Street,” she wrote. The life and times of Saginaw.

In another letter, she confesses that she always had a fantasy of visiting Nepal someday. She read about it in National Geographic and was fascinated. I’m shocked. My mother? Interested in Nepal? Doesn’t she know that they’re all a bunch of pagans?

Could it be that my mother– the Insert Technician– has some wanderlust in her?

“I’m coming home!” I wrote to them four weeks ago. “I bought a ticket to London. I have just enough money for a one-way ticket the rest of the way. Can you pick me up in Detroit?”

“It’s too expensive to park there,” Mom wrote back. “Besides, your father doesn’t like to drive in that traffic. Why don’t you fly to Saginaw and we’ll pick you up from there?”

I am bummed. Disappointed. Furious. Damn her!

I do some calculating. I have 18 more days of travel to Nepal and Kashmir before my departure. Sleeping and eating costs about $1 per day. I already have my railway pass, so no more expense there. Forget about my planned trek in the Himalayas– too expensive. If airfare from London to Detroit is not more than $225, I just might have enough for the Greyhound bus to Saginaw. The hell with her!

Walking back to my guesthouse in sweltering heat, rickshaw drivers offer a ride. But I have to save my money. I walk past a street vendor selling lassi, my favorite treat made with mango, yogurt and sugar. It costs one rupee. Fifteen cents. Nope. Can’t afford it.

Too expensive to park? Are you kidding me? She’s so insensitive! I’ll be damned if she thinks I’m gonna fly all the way to Saginaw.

Nineteen days later, I arrive in London on an Iraqi Airways flight. I spend the night on a bench. I wash my hair in an airport restroom and devour Sugar Frosted Flakes for breakfast. I’m the only person at Heathrow wearing pink flip-flops. Stand-by airfare to Detroit is only $160.

My college friends Jimmy and Denise pick me up in Detroit. They don’t recognize me at first. “You look like a hippie freak!” exclaims Denise.

We pile into Jimmy’s Buick and head north on I-75. I notice how green everything is. Near Flint, we stop at a McDonalds for cheeseburgers and fries. I get sick to my stomach. I fall asleep in the backseat.

I awake when Jimmy pulls into the driveway. My brother, Ron, has hung a “Welcome Home Marilyn” banner on the garage. Dad is out the door and gives me a big hug. He’s just relieved I haven’t shaved my head.

At the front door, Muttsie fends off my attempt to pet her. The living room is just as I remember it. I smell cinnamon cookies.

Mom is at the kitchen sink, her back to me. This looks familiar. Nothing much has changed. Finally, she turns around. She is smiling. There are tears in her eyes. “Welcome home, honey.”

Two days later, Mom quit her job.

Originally published in Sonoma Woman magazine.