Chicken Patti Climbs a Waterfall

The boys went hunting and fishing in Louisiana.

So I took my mom to Jamaica.

This seemed fair.

It was November 2024, and somehow, despite all the traveling I've done, my mom and I had never taken a trip that was just the two of us.

No husbands. No family vacation. No group.

Just me and my mom.

Patti.

This became important almost immediately.

Because Jamaica loves patties.

Chicken patties.

Beef patties.

And everywhere we went, someone would ask my mom her name.

“Patti.”

“Patti? Like Chicken Patti?”

And my mother would light up.

“Yep! I have a chicken farm!”

Or:

“Like Beef Patti?”

“Yep! I have beef too!”

Eventually she was explaining that she had a beef and chicken farm.

She loved this.

Every single time.

You would think the joke might lose something by the sixth or seventh repetition.

It did not.

Not to Patti.

By the end of the trip, she had been Chicken Patti, Beef Patti, and occasionally both.

Honestly, I think Jamaica may have given my mother a stage name.

Just the Two of Us

Part of what I wanted from the trip was simply to share this part of my life with my mom.

Travel has become such a huge part of mine. I love going somewhere I haven't been, eating what people eat there, talking to strangers, seeing how people live, getting outside, learning something I didn't know yesterday.

Doing something I've never done before.

And I wanted to do that with her.

It had been a long time since Mom had traveled internationally, and I wanted her to have both sides of the kind of travel I love.

I wanted to spoil her a little.

And I wanted to scare her a little.

Lovingly.

We stayed at a beautiful all-inclusive resort. We ate and drank and sat by the water. We watched local dancers and listened to music.

We danced too.

Probably badly.

We acted goofy. We laughed. We relaxed.

And we had one of those spa days where you cease being a functioning member of society for several hours.

We got massages.

And not a quick-massage-before-dinner massage.

We were pampered.

Robes, massages, nowhere we needed to be, nothing we needed to accomplish.

The kind of day where eventually you're not entirely certain what time it is and don't particularly care.

It was glorious.

And then, because apparently I can only tolerate relaxation for so long before I need an activity, I took my mother swimming with dolphins.

I Can Do That Now

There were things I dreamed about doing as a kid that simply weren't available to me then.

Swimming with dolphins was one of them.

I didn't stop wanting to do those things. I just grew up and eventually realized I had my own money and could make my own choices about what I did with it.

Wait.

I can do that now.

And then there was the better realization.

I can take my mom.

There's something satisfying about finally giving yourself an experience you wanted as a child.

There's something even better about sharing it with the person who raised that child.

So we went to Dolphin Cove Ocho Rios.

I had some hesitation about the dolphin part beforehand because I'm uncomfortable with animals being kept in tiny enclosures purely for tourists.

What I saw there was different from what I'd pictured.

The dolphins were in a large seawater environment rather than a little concrete swimming pool, and the people working there talked to us about the animals, their care, their socialization, and their histories.

We were told that some had come from much worse situations. One story that stuck with me was about a dolphin they said had previously been kept in a tiny enclosure at a hotel in Mexico.

I haven't independently researched that individual dolphin's history. That's what the people caring for them told us while we were there.

What I can say is that I felt much better after seeing the environment myself.

And then we got in the water.

They swam around us.

We touched them. Hugged them. Got kissed by them.

They pulled us through the water.

And then two dolphins came up behind us, put their noses against the bottoms of our feet, and launched us into the air.

Literally.

Both feet out of the water.

Whole body airborne.

Human projectile by dolphin.

There is no dignified way to be launched into the air by dolphins.

This is useful information.

I recommend surrendering to the experience.

We laughed so hard.

And I got to do something I'd wanted to do since I was little.

With my mom.

It was amazing.

Mom, We're Climbing That

Then we went to Dunn's River Falls.

My mother was considerably less enthusiastic about this portion of the itinerary.

Because when someone says you're going to visit a waterfall, there are several reasonable interpretations.

Look at waterfall.

Photograph waterfall.

Stand near waterfall.

Perhaps enjoy refreshing mist produced by waterfall.

I had selected:

Climb waterfall.

Dunn's River Falls descends toward the Caribbean in a series of natural rock terraces and pools.

And you climb through it.

In the water.

On wet rock.

My mother looked at what I had brought her to and was nervous.

Very nervous.

I told her to trust me.

That we'd take our time.

That I'd help her.

That she could do it.

And she trusted me.

The first few minutes were tentative.

Where do I step?

Is that slippery?

Where do I put my foot?

Are you sure?

Yes.

Come on.

I've got you.

And then, gradually, she stopped asking.

She figured out the rocks and the water.

And she started smiling.

And by the time we got toward the top, she was beaming.

Not polite-photo smiling.

**Proud-of-herself smiling.

Ear to ear.

She had done the thing she'd looked at from the bottom and wasn't sure she could do.

And I was so proud of her.

That may be my favorite memory from the trip.

Not because climbing Dunn's River Falls was the most extraordinary thing we did.

Because I got to watch my mother become proud of herself.

The Funny Thing About “Trust Me”

When you're little, your mother is the one saying it.

Then somehow enough years pass and you're standing in rushing water in Jamaica saying it back to her.

That's strange.

And kind of wonderful.

I wanted to get her outside her comfort zone, but I didn't want to drag her through my version of a good time. I wanted her to discover some things she didn't know she'd enjoy.

And she did.

I got to watch it happen.

Sometimes I would look over at her and think:

Look at my mom.

She's in Jamaica.

She's doing this.

Chicken Patti Was Having a Very Good Time

And we were goofy.

I don't want to polish that out of the memory.

We danced. We laughed. We ate. We drank. We made jokes.

We sat around doing absolutely nothing.

We watched local dancers who were considerably better at dancing than either of us.

We ate Jamaican food and talked to people.

And every few hours someone would discover my mother's name all over again.

“Patti?”

“Yes.”

“Chicken Patti?”

“I have chickens!”

She never got tired of it.

Neither did I.

There are trips where the photographs are beautiful but the memory of taking them isn't particularly interesting.

This wasn't one of those trips.

I remember laughing.

A lot.

Our First One

I didn't know when we went that Jamaica was going to start something.

It was simply:

The boys are going hunting and fishing.

Let's go somewhere.

And we did.

But afterward, Mom and I decided we should do it again.

So now we do.

Every year, sometime around November or December, we take a mother-daughter trip.

Just us.

And I love that Jamaica became the first one.

It had everything I want those trips to keep having: somewhere beautiful, really good food, time to relax, something we haven't done before, plenty of time to act ridiculous, and at least one thing that makes Mom look at me like she's reconsidering whether raising an adventurous daughter was ultimately a good idea.

And eventually:

Trust me.

I Get to Know Her This Way Too

There's another part of traveling with your mother as an adult that I hadn't really thought about before we went.

You already know your mother.

Obviously.

But you know her inside the architecture of your shared life: home, family, holidays, responsibilities, all the roles everybody has occupied for years.

Travel rearranges that.

Suddenly we're just two women somewhere neither of us lives, with nowhere we're supposed to be except wherever we decided to go.

I get to watch her meet strangers. Try something scary. Laugh at something stupid. Dance. Relax.

Be Chicken Patti.

And she gets to see me in a part of my life that I love.

Traveling. Curious. Trying things. Talking to people. Looking for whatever is around the next corner.

We aren't only mother and daughter when we travel.

We're traveling companions.

I like getting to know that version of us.

The Picture at the Top

There are beautiful photographs from Jamaica.

Blue water. Green everywhere. Dolphins. Waterfalls. Sun.

The kind of photographs that make you want to go somewhere.

But one of my favorites is the two of us standing in Dunn's River Falls.

Because the picture doesn't show Mom looking at the climb from the beginning.

It doesn't show the nerves or the first careful steps.

It doesn't show me telling her:

Trust me.

It just shows what happened after.

I didn't know Jamaica was going to become the first of anything.

It was just our trip because the boys were going hunting and fishing in Louisiana.

But now Mom and I take one every year.

And I love that this was the first.

We got dressed up. We danced. We drank cocktails in the pool. We spent an entire day being pampered. I finally got to swim with dolphins, and somehow convinced my mother to let two of them pull her through the water before talking her into climbing a waterfall.

Somewhere along the way she became Chicken Patti.

And somewhere along the way we became traveling companions.

She was scared of that waterfall.

Look at her face.

Chicken Patti made it to the top.