“It’s all in your head.”

I can hear my father saying it. My mother didn’t correct him even though she suffered the same ailment as I did. Often. I don’t remember him saying it to her but he said it to me. Often.

“It’s all in your head.” He said whenever I got car sick.

On a city bus from Bloomfield to Newark in New Jersey, sometime during the last years of big department stores clustered around Market and Halsey Streets, my mother and I set out to have a shopping day. I was accompanying my mother because I was the oldest girl in our family; however, I was not the best shopping companion. As a short, fat, rather plain child who leaned towards play pants, never  dresses, I didn’t enjoy department stores. My younger sister would have been the better choice.

Still, Mom and I boarded the number 128 bus bound for Newark and chatted amiably as we passed Bloomfield Center and headed down Bloomfield Avenue. The 128 was not a local bus and did not stop at every corner, but there were still plenty of stops. The bus slowed down, pulled over to the right to the curb, stopped, then started again, pulled out into traffic and took on as much speed as city streets allowed.  I was always queasy on buses but I was too young to take one alone and the family usually travelled by car.

We chatted until my mother stopped talking and closed her eyes. I didn’t have a clue what was going on and asked her something. She shushed me. As the bus made each of the next few stops, I saw her tense and heard her breathe deeply. Then suddenly, she stood up in the middle of a block, took me by the hand, proceeded quickly to the front of the bus and asked to get off the bus immediately. I imagine that the bus driver understood her urgency. And he stopped. Almost immediately.

We alighted and my mother let go of my hand. She walked quickly to the curb behind the bus and threw up. We did not get on the next bus, we did not go shopping. My mother found a phone booth, called my father and we waited outside in the cold until our family car pulled up with my father and my siblings in it.

I somewhat repeated that scenario years later on a Path train from Jersey City to the West Village early in my pregnancy.  I did not usually get sick on trains but it was hot and stuffy, a bit smelly and I was pregnant. I made it off the train, ran up the steps to the street and threw up in the gutter between two parked cars. Someone coming behind me tut-tutted to her friend and commented about young people being so drunk before the sun went down.  

Those memories were well hidden in my brain. Until last weekend.

Friday night in Vietnam, we met our friends at a bus stop in front of a juice stand on the far side of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. We were a large group—ten adults and three small children. The adventure at hand was a night bus to Sapa, a mountain town in the north of Vietnam, a tourist destination for both Vietnamese and foreigners. The prospect of a night bus brought on visions of the night bus that Harry Potter road—a crazy bus driver, a shrunken head tied to the rear view mirror providing directions, four poster beds sliding around the inside of the bus and poor Harry who didn’t know what he was getting into when he boarded the bus.

On our night bus, the almost fully reclined seats in two tiers from the front to the back of the bus were securely tied down. There was, however, no place to sit up although I didn’t think to ask about that when I boarded the bus. I took a top seat and shared it with Julia. She was happy to snuggle in a soft blanket and drift into sleep.

I tried to imitate her.

Sharing the blanket, closing my eyes and laying still while the bus maneuvered its way though the crowded streets of Friday night in Hanoi. My stomach lurched and I began breathing slow and long and steady.

But it didn’t help. Not one bit.

I felt each abrupt stop and pause on the city streets, each too sharp turn, each swerve to avoid yet another motor scooter. Then the bus driver turned onto the highway intent on delivering us to the Sapa bus station seven hours later.  And possibly because the streets of Hanoi were crowded and difficult to get through, he had time to make up. The bus rocked and bounced as it weaved through lines of cars, now in this lane, now in another.

I held on and out for as long as I could, however, fifteen or twenty minutes on the highway and the mango juice that was in my stomach made a reappearance. I could do nothing to stop it.  I reached for my partner, Ed, who was in the seat across from mine and upon seeing my distress he handed me a plastic bag.

Oh, those vomit bags.

As a child, before the Garden State Parkway was completed, the ride to my grandmother’s house, to my auntie’s house, to the Ukrainian church was fraught with possibilities to use the vomit bag. A ride to the Jersey shore at the beginning of a vacation week required two or three. My parents tried everything to ensure puke-less travel. Everything.  Eating toast and tea for breakfast before a ride, not eating anything before a ride, waking me up just before we were leaving and allowing me to wear pjs in the car, playing music in the car and keeping the car relatively silent and giving me Dramamine. Dramamine. Until one day when they gave me a pill in the kitchen and I threw up in the back yard before getting into the car. That was the last time anyone gave me dramamine. 

The only partial antidote that my parents found was that as soon as I felt sick, my father would stop the car and help me out.  Perhaps he was avoiding cleaning up the entire back seat of the car, perhaps it was at my mother’s direction. He attended me as I stood in the weeds by the side of the road or sat on the curb. Sometimes I threw up, sometimes I didn’t but out of the car before or after throwing up, I could breath without gagging, calm my body down and steady myself.  The ordeal of feeling nauseated left me exhausted, and returning to the inside of the car after a few minutes with me feet on still ground, I would usually sleep until we reached our destination. 

However, after I threw up the first time on our trip to Sapa, the bus just kept going, barreling down the highway. The driver had a schedule and come hell or high water, or puking passenger, he was going to deliver us to Sapa on time. The bus kept going, rocking and lurching and I kept throwing up.  Thank goodness for Ed and our friend’s brother who found many plastic bags and Kleenex to help me contain what was coming up and out and to clean up.  

After a forever’s amount of time, the bus stopped for a bathroom break and a chance for passengers to buy food or drink. I stumbled off the bus, sat on a low wall close to the parked bus and tried pulling myself together. I sat for a long time until I could make my way to the bathroom and took the chance to wash up. There was nothing left in my stomach but the waves of nausea continued coming and I could not take a deep breath without gagging.

When it was time to get back on the bus, Julia was reassigned to a seat with a friend, I spread out on the double seat and put plastic bags in strategic locations and hoped for the best.  The best was that I would fall asleep; however, I had not been able to calm my body and steady myself during our bus stop, and almost as soon as the bus started, I started retching. 

Four hours of the bus ride remained and I wondered if somehow I could just leave the bus.

In college, I interviewed my grandmother’s friends about their journeys from Ukraine to New York’s Ellis Island in the 1920’s. One woman, who traveled from Genoa to Ellis Island in 1919, told me she was sick every day she was on the boat. She whispered to me that in the middle of her month-long journey, she seriously considered suicide.

Two more hours passed, and the bus stopped again. Again, I left the bus, sat on a low wall and breathed deeply. I was exhausted and the waves of nausea had slowed. I drank some water and my stomach stayed still. Ed encouraged me to get back into the bus well before it started to see if I could fall asleep before the movement began. I did not want to get back onto the bus, but his suggestion made sense and I had no other choice but to get to Sapa via that bus.  

And I was exhausted.

When I was in my early twenties, I was persuaded to spend a day on a fishing boat excursion boat. The boat was run by my soon-to-be brother-in-law. Everyone else onboard had a great time, drinking beer and eating. For hours. Music was loud as were the conversations. I was sick. I counted the hours until I could leave the boat, and wondered if I could jump and swim. It almost didn’t matter if I could make it to shore.

I climbed back into the bus and onto my seat. Almost immediately, I fell asleep. There was still almost an hour left in the journey, and I awoke a number of times to gag but the impulse was weaker now. Almost nothing came out of my mouth.

When we arrived in Sapa, I sat outside on a chair, cold, almost shivering but breathing and finding equilibrium while others in our party had breakfast. We took a short van ride to our hotel which checked us in before 6 a.m. Once in the room, I showered and changed and fell into bed to sleep.  

Post-nap, I was still weak. My stomach felt bruised but recovery had begun. I walked around with my friends. I explored Sapa. I took a nap before our evening activities and ate only white rice and a bit of french bread for dinner.

That night, long after Julia and Ed had gone to sleep, I woke up with a clear head unable to return to sleep.  

I did not want to get back on that bus! 

But I wasn’t sure I should voice that desire, however strong it was. It wasn’t “all in my head.” Motion sickness was no matter of will but in almost every instance when I felt ill, I was the only one. The only one of our party to be sick. That only-ness always brought on guilt. Like I was ruining the experience for everyone else. Like I needed some privilege that no one else needed and that I did not deserve. 

But I did not want to get back on that bus.

There are four ways to get to Hanoi from Sapa: an eight-hour train ride, the six to eight hour bus ride, a number of van choices taking at least six hours or a three and a half hour private car ride. We already had tickets for the bus.

Should I really give up our already-bought bus tickets? If it was all in my head, like my father had said, I should . . . Nope, it was never in my head. I did not want to get back on that bus. 

I would not get into the bus again!

I woke up Ed and said, “I cannot get back on that bus.” Without any fuss or additional explanation, we checked online for a private car to take us back to Hanoi. 

The next morning, we climbed into that private car, and three and a half hours later, after a completely uneventful ride, albeit with a travel patch and an anti-nausea pill, we arrived in Hanoi.  As we waited at a red light close to our apartment, our driver typed into his google translator app, “Is this a better journey than the bus?”  A huge grin spread across my face and I gave him a thumbs up.