Give me coffee, ice cream, and lots of flowers to look at and nobody gets hurt!  In Palanga.

I’ve gotten a range of reactions when I told people I’d be spending 9 days traveling internationally with my mother.  They fell primarily into two buckets:

“That’s so nice.”  Or,

“I could never do that.  We’d kill each other.”

Here’s what I knew before.  This woman likes coffee.  I mean really likes coffee.  We learned how to order it in Lithuanian before we left, “Prašom juoda kava,” and we’ve used that phrase probably the most.   Hotels with coffee makers in the room meet with enthusiastic approval.  The good news is that Lithuania seems to have at least as much a coffee culture as Seattle.

What I didn’t know is that her latest addiction is ice cream.  I mean, every time there was a little ice cream stand anywhere (and the Lithuanians put them lots of places) mom wanted one.  She was like a little puppy, hanging back and pulling toward the thing she wants.  And she was super impressed that they sell cones here where the ice cream goes all the way to the bottom of the cone.  Score, Lietuva!

And flowers.  She could look at flowers all day and not get tired.

I think I’ve been more of a grumpypuss on this trip than she was.  Dan saw this coming.  The last thing he said to me at the airport was “Be nice to your motina.”

Thanks for your patience with me, mamytė.  We’ve been getting along mostly well.  Except when I needed a nap.  Which is probably very familiar for her.