It came to me on the first morning of our safari, when my son and I were both bleary-eyed and jet-lagged in South Africa, a big place further than we had ever been or thought we would be. There was this equilibrium shift between us, a giddiness that was at once familiar and also new. We were walking with our flashlights in the cool, dark morning together, ready to go on a game drive. We felt a shared sense of ease. We were equals.
In our previous life, I packed the lunches, planned all the things and booked all the trips for our family. I organized our luggage in the back of whatever broken-down car our gang could afford while raising my four sons as a single mom. The entirety of our life together hinged on me. While the boys relied on me in so many ways, I always thought of my usefulness as their mom like a clock ticking down to midnight. It terrified me.
But then came the chance to visit South Africa and bring along my adult son. He was newly married and happy—a good man. He was no longer my son first; he was his own person. I wanted him with me for this big experience—and to see if we could be something new to each other. Here is what I learned.
1. Let someone else plan everything
I would describe my vacation planning when my sons were younger as joyful efforts that never went quite right. Our car leaked oil on one road trip, and we suffered through numerous canceled flights. I lost count of how many bathing suits, bottles of sunscreen and sneakers were forgotten through the years… which was fine when my sons were young and in my care. Let’s be honest: they didn’t have much of a choice. But now Ben is grown, and I wanted to get it right.
I called upon a tour company to plan everything. They arranged our flights into Johannesburg and out of Cape Town a week later. They sent us detailed packing lists for our four days at Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge on safari and called me to ask questions about what we hoped to get out of our trip. I planned nothing, and it was like exhaling a breath I had been holding my entire adult life. I realized all those years of planning had kept me from being present. But letting someone else take the reins set Ben and me up as equals on this trip. We talked for hours, made eye contact and ate snacks prepared by other people. We were relaxed. A revelation.
2. Get comfortable in the back seat of his life
This trip was about more than seeing elephants, lions, giraffes and the bright pink sun setting over the wild bush. It was about meeting my son—the man he is now, instead of the boy I raised. We have always fallen back into our old habits when we’re together. When he comes home, I become a mom of a little boy again, trying desperately to recapture something that I now realize is gone for good. I cook his favorites from when he was little, and I tell stories of his childhood. We accidentally turn back into who we always were.
Out there in the bush, we found our new groove. We sat in chairs facing the watering hole and watched life happen. He told me about his job, his friends and his journalism course. We talked about podcasts we both liked, new music he discovered and politics. He slowly revealed himself to be someone I would call a friend, whether I had raised him or not.
He was braver than I was. During a night game drive, a female lion approached our vehicle. I am embarrassed to admit that, in a panic, I tried to climb over to his side of the Jeep. But he calmed me down. He also didn’t make me feel foolish when it became clear that the lioness was, in fact, not remotely interested in us. I saw the father he might someday become while we were out there. I saw how he treated others. Our guide Dion and tracker Bongi were both about Ben’s age, bright-faced, happy, open-hearted men. The three of them became such good friends that they nearly wept while saying goodbye. I saw who he has become to other people in the world, and everything inside me sighed.
3. Don’t get wrapped up in anyone else’s cliché
Ben was the first to notice the way people questioned us as a mother and son traveling together, and the assumptions they made. “If you were my dad or I was your daughter, people would think nothing of us going on safari together,” he pointed out. Several people told him he was very kind for traveling with me. Several others asked me if his wife was “OK” with us going away together. Every time I felt myself redden, and every time Ben reminded me, “This is not our problem.” What they think is none of our business, so we let it go in favor of enjoying our time together.
4. Say “yes” to everything
I didn’t always want to go on a game drive, but I said “yes” to be with Ben. I said “yes” to going to Boulders Beach to marvel at the penguins on a bus trip from Cape Town before we went home. I think about what I would have missed had I said “no.” I would not have seen the pink morning sky in the bush as we drank coffee together and watched the impala run. I would have missed out on the excellent fish and chips at the Time Out Market and the waves crashing against the Cape of Good Hope as we hiked up and around together. Saying “yes” to Ben taught me about myself: my tendency to retreat, to be the boss and not challenge myself fully. Saying “yes” reminded me that sometimes my son might know better than me.
5. Become kids together
I became a child again with my son. This was perhaps the greatest treat of all, beyond the elephants and the hippos and the gorgeous dinners under the stars by roaring bonfires. Stripped of our old roles of caretaker and child, we became carefree. We delighted in every detail of our day, ready to take on an adventure. We tracked down wild dogs and hyenas, giraffes and hippos and elephants and rhinos from the back seat of the Jeep and got genuinely, deep-down excited about every sunset as though it was our first and last one ever.
Everything was touched with magic because to us, everything was a surprise arranged by someone else, from the mosquito netting around our beds to the big pot of warm bread pudding and homemade ice cream after our dinner. We couldn’t eat enough food if we tried, bewitched by the smell of delicious things roasting and a roaring bonfire. We got giddy every morning. We never complained about the 5:30 a.m. wake-up because the world around us was fresh and new and full of wonder.
He recognized, I think, the impermanence of this trip–a little jewel of time in our new lives together in a place full of magic. As we drove along the bumpy backroad to our flight out of Kruger National Park, Ben was quiet. He wore his sunglasses and watched the impala run across the quiet fields in the early morning sun. “I might never be here again,” he said quietly.
I looked at all of him then: the man he has become, the boy he once was and the future he’s building far away from me and all of this. And I thought, “Neither will I.”
Photo courtesy of Jennifer McGuire.
