By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

Here we are poolside in Cambodia, and all I can think about is what we’ll forget when we get on the plane. My fear has a storied history: hello, wallet left in Cleveland; credit card left in South Boston, Virginia; and kids’ suitcases left in the front hall of the house because I assumed someone else put them in the trunk of the car. Yes, I was and am the mother. But I digress.

On this vacation to Southeast Asia, we’ve already lost a camera at the airport in Saigon and in an indeterminate spot, two envelopes of cash, one with Thai money.

About 20 years ago, my husband and I also lost our more detail-oriented first spouses to cancer. More likely they had tired of the emotional burden it took to organize us.

The only good news here is that my husband and I take our losses with equanimity, which incidentally is one of the tenets of Buddhism, as we learned at our visit to a temple today whose name escapes me. All I know is that it was not Angkor Watt.

The truth is, I feel extremely lucky to be here and to have travelled to Asia at all. When I was younger, I remember being scared to travel to exotic places. In 1987, my first husband wanted to go to Marrakesh as part of our honeymoon. I refused because I didn’t want to get the shots required in the event I got pregnant, which, by the way, neither of us had any intention of letting happen on our honeymoon.

Now it is 34 years later, and I no longer suffer from a pathological fear of shots. Prior to this trip, I was inoculated against Japanese encephalitis, typhoid, MMR (round 2), and tetanus. What I didn’t get an injection for, however, was spacey absentmindedness. Well, there’s always the next trip.

Just the other day, I read a piece in the paper about whether when traveling it’s smart to unpack suitcases or leave everything folded in a bag. Maybe for us, the key is never to open the packed suitcases in the first place.