Why MamaGaard Rocks 1

My father doesn't like travel or vacations much meaning my mom, Colleen Ostergaard, who adores travel and adventure, sometimes takes vacations solo with excess children. She approaches these vacays with a balanced diet of planning and spontaneity; hotels are usually booked, cities are always met on schedule, days are free to who we meet and what we encounter. Getting lost, missing ferries, meeting pool sharks, she incorporates these things with poise and a competency that enriches every trip without losing all-important safety or plane ticket deadlines.

The greatest example I have of this, is the first time I was aware of it. I was seven and Mom and her friend Kimiko wanted to take me and my best friend Mika to a super sweet, mountain top spa resort thing outside of Taipei. We lived in




Taipei at the time, so this was to be a weekend trip. No worries.



We start. Lovely weather, road trip games, Mika and I have little idea as to where we are going, but don't care, because we're together, and we're seven. The moms do their chat thing in the front, we pay them no mind.



Half up the mountain we get flagged over by some dirty looking chinese people. Thank golly Mom speaks chinese, so she can understand what they're talking about. I don't get a translation, so we must be ok. We go on, there's this amazing cliff to our left, and clouds start filling in the valley so I can't look at the trees and bushes anymore. The same cliff rises to our right and the patterns of the rock blur as we are trucking along at a good 30 miles an hour. There's a tunnel up ahead.


I like tunnels, we hold our breath going under them. A good car game. Instead, though, there are chinese police men in blue uniforms waving their arms and shouting. I can't hear or understand what they say, but Mom gets out to talk to them. She can. She's cool.


She comes back and talks seriously with Kimiko. Mika and I start being quiet, I ask if I can hold my breath through the tunnel. “Of course, honey,” says Mom. Mika and I hold our breath, but because of the serious talking between the moms we don't try to tickle each other while we turn blue. We enter the tunnel. When we come out the other side we pass under a honest-to-goodness waterfall like I have ALWAYS wanted to see. It was awesome. On the other side of the water fall are more peasant looking ladies, they are also waving their hands.

Mom rolls down her window. I see giant, giant rocks in the road before us. Giant. Some of the ladies are trying to push them into the valley, they disappear into the clouds. I want to throw one. Mom rolls up her window and I have no recollection of how the hell we turn around in a one-lane tunnel or one-lane cliff face switchback. The next thing I remember (does stress block memories? Mom tells me I was very quiet for this part) is Mom and Kimiko throwing more boulders into the clouds like the ladies did. We'd returned past the police men and going down hill now. She told me to stay in the car. I wanted to help, I wanted to throw a rock, but I stayed because Mom is always right about what to do and how to do it.

My mother stayed calm and pragmatic. One villager might spread rumors, one police man might exagerrate, but 5 villagers and 3 police man and several hundred big rocks are enough evidence to destroy a good holiday. She weighed options and made life-saving decisions. She used all her mental and physical skills in a synthesis of competency to get Mika, Kimiko and I home safely. This was when she stopped being just my mom, and started being, objectively, a hero.