Take Your Suitcase

I would not have remembered at exactly what age I was responsible for packing my own suitcase if it were not for the movie Terminator 2.

I remember I was responsible for packing my suitcase for a trip to Salt Lake City my brother and I took with our mother one summer. I was around eight or nine years old. She was putting her decades of experience as a RN to use at the time as a medical bill auditor for a company called Medco. With the internet still in its infancy, it was necessary for my mother to travel to different hospitals all over the southwest in order to do her job. She loved to travel and instilled in me what I have come to recognize (myself now an auditor) to be an auditor’s love of fast-paced life on the road: different hotels, different cities, different clients from one week to the next.

So she had a job in Salt Lake City and we were both out of school. It was a 14 hour drive from Phoenix (which was an especially long drive, even for my mother in audit mode) in our silver Camry station wagon.

We ended up seeing Terminator 2 while we were there. It was 1991: I was ten and my brother was seven. There is a scene in the movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger says to someone, “Eat me”. My mother thought this was absolutely hilarious and ran around Salt Lake City (not a particularly liberal berg), telling random strangers in elevators to “eat her” for the rest of the trip.

So I was ten and I got to pack my suitcase for this trip. I had relished packing my own suitcase. I don’t remember if I had gotten to pack on my own before this trip but I vividly remember the joy of getting to pick out my own clothes for the SLC excursion, planning what I would wear each day. I remember being delighted at all the extra space I had when I was finished, especially compared to when my mother would pack for me. I stuffed the extra room with books to read (The Babysitters Club, Bruce Coville, and Christopher Pike novels were my favorites at the time) and my journal to write in.

Imagine my dismay when we finally arrived at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City after a very long day of driving and I discovered my suitcase hadn’t made it in the car. My mother didn’t yell at me, but did appear visibly disappointed. I remember her saying, “Well, good thing I packed some extra clothes for you.” I remember something she packed was pink and I was so bummed I had to wear it. I do remember being disappointed in myself–how could I have done such a thing? I packed all that stuff and I didn’t even get to use any of it.

I mentioned this story once to Basil. As far as stories of my childhood, my mother, and traveling go, it is not particularly memorable. My mother used to tell it this way, “Remember when we went to Salt Lake City and you forgot your suitcase? Don’t forget to take your stuff with you this time.” She made it sound like a typical “oh the silly things kids do when they are young” story, and I myself thought of it in this way.

I have no idea what reminded me of it–something Basil said triggered the memory in my mind. When I told him the story, I told it the same way, basically saying I was supposed to have brought my suitcase on this trip, I forgot it, and then after that my mom used to tease me about it to make sure I didn’t forget to pack my suitcase on future trips.

Basil helped me realize this is not a cute story. He talked to me about how my mother may have been gaslighting me. She wanted to set herself up as a hero who saved me, she wanted to make sure I wore the clothes she packed for me, and she wanted to take the wind out of my sails after I had been so proud of myself for packing it all on my own. The added narcissist bonus was she got to make me feel terrible about it for years and years afterward.

Why was it so hard for me to see these things? I don’t know–but it was.