As worrisome as it is when those lights come on far from a gas station, they dim next to the ones that light up our brains when we’re far from a gas station or rest area and realize our bladders are at capacity.
Still, until this holiday travel season, I never imagined my personal amber alert would make me new friends.
Part 1: Dashing through the cold.
The word “delta” is both the name of the place where rivers empty at journey’s end and the airline that had me squirming like a 4-year-old with a bright red Kool-Aid tongue.
Originally scheduled for 10:20 a.m. arrival, an update the evening before the flight pushed the time back to 9:55 a.m. Aware of this of this only because my wife pays attention to such things, I set my alarm a half hour earlier.
A further update I was unaware of had our younger car and me idling 80 minutes after that in the convenient but bathroom less Cell Phone Lot of the John Glen Columbus International Airport.
The time-lag was enough to allow the quart of coffee that kick-started me at 8 a.m. to complete its travels to my body’s version of the Clarence J. Brown Dam and Reservoir.
Alarms were blaring to signal an imminent dam breech when, what to my wondering eyes did appear but the gleam of a porta-potty standing quite near.
The sight of it in a construction zone of the other side of a fence made me happier than any of the festivals at which I’d stood in front of a line of them, none flashing an occupied sign.
My joy nearly overflowed when I then saw that there was no fence on the street side of the site and that I need only step over a rope that sagged between a couple of posts to gain access.
Filled with the excitement felt by Columbus when he discovered America, I was brought up short when the fear warned me that the door might be locked.
But visions of the cover of the 1971 Who album Who’s Next flashed only briefly in my mind before found surrounded by warm plastic of a recently emptied and clean porta-potty.
My coffee dropped down for a smooth landing, and when our son texted me at 11:16 a.m., I was running on empty.
Part 2: I meet friends in strange places
In the meantime, while back in the car and toasty, I spied another member of the full bladder club following my lead and making her way to the plastic temple of relief. When she and headed back to her car, I rolled down my window and gave her a thumbs-up sign. And because she returned the thumbs-up instead of calling the authorities, I walked over and signaled for her to roll down the window.
Inside, next to Pam Vickers’ smiling face, was the smiling face of her son, Trent, just arrived on a flight from Oregon and whom she and her husband, who was in the back seat, were expecting 30 years ago when they moved into their home in Newark.
After festive greetings, I learned the Delta flight bringing our son was also carrying their daughter, Brittany, and son-in-law — I’m not making this up — John.
During a warm encounter full of laughs, I explained that the only time I’d been useful to my parents was in steering them to buy the Rav-4 I was driving instead of a sedan during their retirement after I made the brilliant observation that it would be easier to get in and out of.
Next to that, I confessed, my just-witnessed courage to go where no one else from the Cell Phone Lot had gone stood as one of the few instances in my life in which I appeared to be a leader worth following.
Like the good mother she is, Pam said, “When the motivation levels are high, we can all be leaders,” then spoke the truth: “If it wasn’t going to be you, eventually it would have been me.”
News that I planned to write a column about my on-ground turbulence led to an exchange of contact information and a telephone conversation in which we both discovered that we shared more than panicky visions of a locked outhouse.
Her confession that at age 62, she’s “at the stage of life where I have a habit of being very observant of locations of bathrooms” led me to share my coarser way of describing bladder realities at age 70: “I always (please insert the 16th letter of the alphabet here) and ask questions later.”
Conversation soon turned to more traditional holiday ice breakers.
She is retired from a career in IT that ended at IBM, her husband from one in engineering truck axels first for Rockwell, then Meritor.
Of their grown children “We’re proud of a lot of things,” she said, “but what we’re super proud of them” is the curiosity that is driving both to be “lifelong learners.”
I responded with my often-stated gratitude for working in a profession that has been “a continuing education in my own ignorance and prejudice” as it opened my eyes on a and endlessly fascinating world.
(I failed to tell her, but she’ll soon read that one of my educator mother’s most precious positions is a poster with the legend “Learning is Forever” signed and given to her by a person who attended the ceremony celebrating the founding of the U.S. Department of Education.
The conversation that turned to what we’ve learned later in life and are reminded of every Christmas season: The joy of children who come home for the holidays.
“We have been lucky enough for them to have (events that give them) a reason to be home at least a couple times a year,” she said. “And we try to get to them a couple times a year.
I loved what she said next: “If it’s going to be more than a few months (apart), I’m going to be on the struggle bus. Any more than that, it’s tough for my mom’s heart to not have contact with them.”
While phone and Facetime are fine as far as they go, “It’s just not the same for me,” she added.
Only on visits do you “get to hug them, look in their eyes (and) have a real conversation.”
Then came another bit of wisdom those in their seventh and eighth decades of know not to take for granted: “We appreciate the fact that they enjoy seeing us.”
I responded in a way predictable from a father whose Christmas tradition includes watching at least three Star Wars reruns with his son.
That being separated at the holidays would be “a disturbance in the force.”
“The older people get,” she responded, “the more they (can) tend to fixate on some little thing that happened in the past and be unable to kind of set that aside to a spend time together while there still is time.”
Two more things:
One: When she said “I guess it doesn’t matter what brings people together,” I don’t think she was suggesting the porta-potty as the common ground for the meeting of our national bladders and minds, but didn’t ask.
Two: Connoisseurs of portable in toilets who have plans to visit the Chicago area in the new year may want to stop for a stroll through the Skokie Sculpture Park. The units there are provided and served by Oui-Oui Enterprise, Ltd. And, no, I didn’t make that up, either.
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