David Sedaris: ‘For Mom’s surprise, our US trip was a bum deal’

I’m sometimes pretty picky about food, but this was all great in my opinion. One night we ate kangaroo burgers while watching the sun set! Everyone we met was super nice and we loved the wildlife. I gave the country five stars – the highest rating possible. Check it out if you ever get the chance!

Australia was very much on my mind last month as we headed to the US for this year’s summer vacation. We flew into Los Angeles where, after landing, we were taken to a room and strip searched – my mother, my father, my sister, and me. There was just one officer for all of us. My dad and I asked if we could wait outside until the ladies were done but he said “No” and “Shut up, you.”

I kept my eyes closed because I didn’t want to see my mom naked but when the guy stuck his finger in my butt I opened them out of pain and surprise and saw that my mother didn’t have any breasts, just scars across her chest.

Hours later, when we were in our clothes again and were reunited with our luggage I said to her: “Mom, why didn’t you tell Roisin and me that you’d had cancer? Why keep us in the dark?”

She said: “Let’s not talk about it here in the airport.”

That night we went to dinner at a place where, if you could lift your steak with one hand, they’d give it to you for free. What they don’t tell you in advance is that it’s still attached to the cow, so of course none of us could lift ours and it wound up costing so much we had to surrender our hotel rooms and sleep under the stars in the parking lot of a Circle K.

As we laid there, Mom said that aside from the little melanoma spot they found on her shoulder a few years back, she had never had cancer. “I lost my breasts in a card game,” she told us.

“But how is that even possible?” I asked.

My father laid his hand on my shoulder. “Let her finish, son.”

“It was years ago,” my mother continued, long before you kids were born. You see, this isn’t my first trip to America. I came once before when I was 25 or so.”

“To LA?” Roisin asked.

“No,” mom said. “I went to a place called Natchez Mississippi hoping I might make it as a riverboat gambler.”

Roisin sat up straight. “Playing what?”

“Was it poker?” I asked. “Texas hold ‘em? Three card monty?”

“Blackjack,” mom said. “Everyone told me I was a natural. Then one night I found myself with my back against the wall. My breasts were all I had left to bet and what can I say?” She reached over and tousled my hair. “Your mother got dealt a rotten hand, kid.”

Someone came in the night as we slept and made off with our suitcases. Luckily our plane tickets were in dad’s pocket along with –thank God – his bank cards. This meant we could still take part two of our American trip and fly to the nation’s capital, Washington DC, which was OK, I guess. We saw WrestleMania at the Kennedy Center, and big exhibits by a painter called Sylvester Stallone at both the National Gallery and the Smithsonian.

In New York, our third stop, we went to the Statue of Liberty, which is now just called the Statue. They had just gold leafed it, so we couldn’t go up into the crown part, just stand on the ground and eat $45 hot dogs while listening again and again to the same Village People song they’d played at all the museums in Washington.

I’ll always think of America as the place where I learned the truth about my mother’s past. The trip was OK, I guess, but the USA is no Australia. I give it one star.

Photograph John Bryson/Getty