On Blogging and My Mother

Only recently did I start working at an internet-based company, my first “real” job out of college. As I’m beginning my career, my mother is ending hers. And she’s taking a cross-country bike trip from Oregon to Massachusetts with her long-time partner. I’m not bitter.

Currently, in the fair city of San Francisco, I sit behind a desk and work on the web. I have a degree in print journalism and have never taken a class in web editing. When I got my job, I felt like I was cheating the system. I felt I was lucky for not having to scrape by at a small-town newspaper, warming my hands over a flickering candle in some kind old lady’s attic.

A somewhat recent college graduate, I was going to school in northern Arizona where outdoor adventures abounded. I became an avid rock climber, enjoying the canyon lands early and often as much as I could. After graduating I moved up to Alaska with my boyfriend, now my fiancee. We drove. It was a long way up the map. We slept in private little pockets of trees where we wouldn’t be bothered by other travelers. My mother swallowed her worry. My father almost had a hernia. As I say, I’m not bitter about my mother’s ability to take more than a month off of work to go on an adventure.

When Mom decided she was going her whirlwind adventure she also decided that I, as the journalist in the family, should document. I’m building her a blog.

I have no idea what this blog will reflect. I’m worried that it will reflect my inability to put my mother first after her years of supporting my brother and I as a single parent. Can a blog reflect that kind of meaning? I’m also torn between what I want to write and what she may want people to know.

Not every day can be peaches and cream on the road. No trip is all sunshine. Their bikes may break down, their spirits may slacken. And those damn semis. I’m wondering if I will end up a digital support crew, sending out shots of Gatorade and patch kits across the divide. I’m worried that I will worry too much.

If it is true that life comes full circle I never thought mine would come full circle through a blog. As a member of a generation defined by its technical astuteness I wonder if I will be able to touch my mother when she needs it most.

A little more than a month stretches out before the rubber hits the road. In so many ways.