Travel writer Mark Chesnut has released a memoir titled “Prepare for Departure: Notes on One … [+] Mother, Misfit Son, Inevitable Mortality and the Enduring Soreness of Frequent Flyer Mileage” (Vine Leaves Press, 2022).
Within the travel media industry, Mark Chesnut is known for his bylines in many trade and consumer publications and his Latin American travel blog, LatinFlyer.com.
But recently, Chesnut published a new memoir that takes an entirely different route. It centers on his lifelong relationship with his mother, Eunice Chesnut.
In “Prepare for Departure: Notes on a Single Mother, a Misfit Son, Inevitable Mortality & the Enduring Allure of Frequent Flyer Miles” (Vine Leaves Press, 2022), Chesnut delves into childhood and adult memories, most of which relate to his mother. In a Q&A with Forbes, Chesnut shared more about his memories and how his mother shaped his direction in life.
Travel writer and memoirist Mark Chesnut poses for a picture at Medellin Airport.
Forbes: While many members of the travel industry know you for your career in travel media, it is surprising to find that your memoir focuses on your relationship with your mother in childhood and adulthood. . Why did you choose to go in this direction?
Jastan: It’s true — people who know me as a travel writer might be surprised to find that this book goes deeper than travel. It really is a story about a mother and son and the emotional journeys that families sometimes have to take together. When my mother fell ill, and it seemed that she would not be around me much longer, I felt compelled to write about our experiences. It was a kind of therapy for me, a way to cope.
Documenting our life together—from when I was a child, to the last months of her life—provided a platform to explore many issues, including parent-child relationships; how misfit children can find their identity and self-worth; how to follow your own passion in life; how family relationships evolve after a child comes out as LGBTQ; and how adult children cope with illness and the loss of parents. It was heartening to hear how people could relate to various aspects of the book. Most of these themes are universal, after all.
Travel is still a big part of the book, of course. It has always been my personal passion, and the book shows the transformative power of travel and how it can mean different things to different people. I even explain how I became a travel writer, albeit in a rather humorous way that is meant to entertain as much as inform. But overall, this book isn’t really made up of travel essays or travel writing; it’s about the wider and deeper journeys we sometimes want to take, whether alone or with our families.
A young Mark Chesnut poses with his mother, Eunice Chesnut, in Tucson in February 1978.
Why did you want to write a memoir?
It was really an emotional and psychological necessity for me, although I haven’t even started writing a book. My mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor and her health was declining. She moved from Western New York State to a nursing home near my apartment in New York City. It was a very stressful and emotional time for both of us. Being a writer, I suppose it was only natural that one of my main coping mechanisms was to write about what was happening. But at first I didn’t know it would become a memoir, or a whole book — it happened gradually.
I wrote down all the difficult challenges that my mother and I faced, and that helped me cope. But then I started thinking about the whole story of our life together and writing about it too—the funny, weird, and challenging moments. Memories I didn’t want to lose. I started writing about childhood memories—crazy things like playing flight attendant on abandoned school buses when I was fourteen, coming out as a teenager, how my mother handled my marriage , and many other issues.
After I started taking memoir writing classes and submitting some of my essays to literary journals, I realized that I had enough material for a book, and that what I was writing about was affecting other people. “Prepare for Departure” is really about more than just my mom and me. It is about universal emotions such as love for family, longing for acceptance and following one’s passions to build the life you really want. It’s nice to share something so personal and help give voice to other people’s experiences, too.
A young Mark Chesnut is given an introduction to airlines.
How did you determine which stories about her to share in your book?
“Prepare for Departure” is essentially a collection of essays that jump back and forth in time; the so-called “present” is when my mother is in the nursing home in New York City and we are dealing with issues such as illness, constant bureaucracy and imminent death – but we still find some fun and dark humor in this, which helps us to we pass Humor provides such relief in difficult situations. What’s the point of going through painful times if you can’t laugh about it at some point?
The book’s many flashbacks cover the time from when I was four years old until I got married. For these chapters, my goal was to write about specific experiences that were either significant in terms of their effect on our family relationship and our own personal development, or that say something about -society as a whole. In many cases, however, I simply wrote about situations because I thought they were so funny or strange that they were stories worth telling. Being weird can be much more interesting than trying to be normal.
What did your mother think of your memories?
She loved to speak and write in public and share with people, so in a way I think she was thrilled that people were reading about some of our experiences together. She was really loved in the town where she lived for 60 years — Brockport, New York — and I think it’s really touching to know that those people still think of her and want to read about her, and also that new people. being introduced to her and you can see how interesting, funny and intelligent she was.
In a way, I think she would be a bit embarrassed about some of the more personal aspects of our lives being revealed. But I tried to portray both of us realistically, as imperfect human beings who evolved over time.
In his memoirs, Mark Chesnut reflects on his relationship with his mother throughout his life and … [+] during her passing. A 1970 photo of the two of them is shown.
You often traveled to and from Kentucky with your mother to see family. How have these experiences shaped you?
Travel was integral to our family structure. I grew up in the western New York town of Brockport, near Rochester, but my extended family all lived in Kentucky, and my mother always budgeted time and money so that we could fly or drive to the Bluegrass State from at least three times a year. , for the first 17 years of my life. Those trips were so important to me. They helped to strengthen my sense of family, and I appreciate that my mother understood the importance of this.
Beyond that, the trips also represented a much-needed escape from life in my own hometown, where I was a bad boy. I couldn’t play sports. I walked in a funny way, at least according to some kids. And since I didn’t grow up with siblings close to my own age, I related better to adults than to children. I think feeling like a seeker is one reason why I became obsessed with travel. It represented many things to me: the warmth and acceptance of family, the relief of getting away from everyday life, the glamor of boarding a plane and the thrill of charging down an interstate highway. No wonder I became a travel writer!
A young Mark Chesnut is being held by his uncle Edward Chesnut in this 1968 photo. We are standing … [+] with Mark’s sister, Glynn,
Your memoir includes chapters on advice topics related to travel and various social situations. Why did you choose to share the book format?
Those little pieces of advice, which I call “Eunice’s Tips,” are designed to be helpful yet entertaining about travel, etiquette and life that I’ve learned from my mom over the years. I created those as separate sections because they are being written more in her voice, not mine—especially when she was yelling at me about mispronouncing the French-sounding names of some towns in Kentucky.
Where does the title of the book come from?
The title came to me quite early in the writing process. I needed a clever phrase that served as a double meaning. “Prepare for take off” is what the flight attendants say as they prepare the cabin for take off, of course, so it evokes travel, excitement, escape and the allure of getting away from this throughout, which is a continuous theme in the book. But “leaving” also refers to death, which is also something we all have to prepare for at some point.
Since the prospect of my mother’s death was the initial impetus for writing this book, the editors and I found that the title worked well to reflect that aspect of the story—inevitable mortality— as well as the themes of the book related to travel. “Prepare for Departure” explores the roots of wanderlust, for sure, and also shows the emotional journeys that life sometimes sends us too.
