What happens when you put two insomniacs in a room?
A reversal of roles: travels with my mother, pt. 3.
This was an interesting Mother’s Day coming off the heels of a long trip, in which my mom and I spend more time with each other than we have in almost 20 years. Unsurprisingly, we discovered some surprising things about our relationship.
Eleven hotels and not a single light switch
One evening, midway through our RidiculouslyHecticTour! through Korea where we moved to a different hotel every night for 11 days before settling in Seoul (not sure I would recommend), my cousin and I were up chatting in a hotel room in the mountains where the 2018 Winter Olympics were held. We had bought a bottle of wine at a convenience store, and it was perhaps the first time that we were able to kick back instead of collapsing of exhaustion on our beds after a full day of sightseeing and eating three full meals daily—something our bodies weren’t accustomed to.
As 11pm approached, I got up to leave even though I wasn't ready to turn in. I had a nagging suspicion that my mom was in our room unable to sleep because she didn’t know how to turn off the lights. Admittedly, the light situation was overly complicated. Switches on walls are not a thing, it seems, in hotel rooms in Korea. Everything is controlled by a single panel located on a wall or a remote, powered by your hotel key card.
“I bet you anything that my mom is up right now waiting for me to come back to turn off the lights,” I predict to my cousin as I stand up to gather my things.
As I walk into our room next door, I’m immediately met with a frustrated plea to turn off the lights. My mom was indeed up with all the lights blazing, waiting for me to return.
“Where were you? I don’t know how to turn off the lights!”