Single Moms of South Pas: Traveling in Packs

Although summer feels almost over, many of us are just starting out on whatever family trips we can pull together. Single parent travel invites all sorts of opportunities and challenges.  

I just returned from a week at Martha’s Vineyard with my friend Barbara and her son McCoy; we were “camping out” at a cousin’s beautiful house. It’s been only a month since my dad died—the day before Father’s Day—and this travel opportunity, which I found out about at his funeral, felt like a parting gift from him.

Now I’m back clutching my vacation memory like the last crumb ... a lifeboat keeping me afloat. Being at the Vineyard with its gingerbread houses, lighthouses, and lobster rolls, was an exotic vacation to a world far from our apartment in South Pasadena. My son Gabe dove off the bridge at State Park and we swam with “the Polar Bears” in the icy-cold early morning.

J'ADORE PARIS 

Many years ago before children, I took a red-eye from L.A. to Paris and walked, bleary-eyed, right into the glass wall of a French gallery. The distressed owner brought me to the pharmacy next door terrified that I’d need plastic surgery. At the hospital, 10 handsome North African doctors surrounded me, murmured sympathetically and placed a teeny stitch above my eye. I left without a bill—courtesy of the French nationalized medical system.

Lonely and dazed, I called a friend of a friend. She was horrified at my Paris trip thus far and insisted I stay at their apartment. The next day, she took me to a French lingerie store. Poor and heartbroken, I didn’t even buy one pair of underwear. 

“It’s good just to see,” she told me. 

But I vowed someday I’d return to Paris for romance and lingerie.

FLASH FORWARD

I met Barbara at “Co-Op” Camp in Yosemite—a great place for single parents to let their youngun’s roam. A year later, she sent me a “how about this?” email with a Travelzoo link to a Paris trip. Off we went—two single moms and our sons aged eight and eleven.

Leaving our rooms with the narrow single beds and tiny windows, we squeezed into the ancient iron elevator. Sweet dough odors wafted from Buena Pizza, and a round pizza-man motioned us inside waving his arms and speaking a confusing blend of French, English, Spanish and Arabic. Using our own mix of languages and gestures, we ordered pepperoni pizza.

“Oh, oui, si, not problem, pepperoni, delicioso, I bring you!”  

He brought a pizza covered in piercing red topping—not meat, but a type of pepper. A pizza with a perfectly cooked fried egg bubbled at a neighboring table, and the people there invited us—in Spanish—to join them. We became comfortable enough with them to ask our most pressing question: “Where do you find the best French lingerie?”

We woke our sons early the next morning and found the small shop. While we tried enticing combinations of silk, satin, embroidered flowers, and see-through underwear, our sons played with Yu-gi-oh cards and medieval figurines. We replaced our worn-out nursing bras with lace—black, red and violet—whispering over our breasts, smelling of Paris and possibilities.

Back home, I framed a picture of the alluring woman advertising Simone Perelle—she would remain a mysterious Parisian to anyone who asked. But I knew. I was sexy and loved. My son slept, soft breath, beside me.

We hope to hear of your favorite spots, worst disasters and greatest insights from traveling solo with children as we share ours. Feel free to share your stories at carla@sameth.com.