Get a rental car, don’t get a rental car, yes, get one. Who will be in which car, who is picking up whom from trains or the nursing home, who can go to the store again?
We were traveling to a relative’s house for Thanksgiving, in two cars packed with boxes and food, a wheelchair, two ramps and a walker.
My husband and I and one son live in Carbondale, and our other son, who lives in South Lake Tahoe, California, and his partner were kind enough to invite us all for Thanksgiving in their house, finally through phase one of a major fixup.
“Go ahead,” I told Mike and Ted. “Have fun.” My mother, age 95, had asked me to come back to Maryland for Thanksgiving, and that’s what I was doing.
My father’s side of the family had a revered custom of holiday get-togethers, and many present-day Thanksgivings have continued at my family’s home in Annapolis and that of my father’s cousin Dick, in D.C. Though neither my father nor Dick are here any longer, their widows have carried the tradition on.
On Thanksgiving, my nephew Sam and I fetched the wheelchair and ramps for my sister (his mother) Lucy, who had a severe stroke, from the garage. We lifted the wheelchair into the trunk of my mother’s car and stowed the two folding aluminum ramps, which probably weigh a total of 60 pounds, in the way back of my rental car, and then I stood stymied until I could figure out the power hatchback closure.
Sam and my mother left, with a load of food contributions, to pick up Lucy at a nursing home; my sister Meg and I packed up more food, plus bowls and spoons and cheese boards, and started the hour’s drive. At my first-cousin-once-removed (by marriage) Kate’s house, several of us together got Lucy in her chair up two sets of steps, and all enjoyed a small, for us, but mighty Thanksgiving of 11 people, with a wheelchair at one end of the table and two high chairs at the other. My little second cousins (once removed), ages 2 and 5, sat side by side with plastic ware and earnest expressions.
Four days later, I packed out for a 4pm flight from Baltimore-Washington International (BWI). The airport is about 40 minutes away. I gassed up toward the end and was just approaching the rental-car complex when I sat straight up. Oh shit! The wheelchair ramps aren’t still in the car, are they?
I pulled over and, cringing, opened the hatchback. There, of course, were the ramps, big and heavy and having cost hundreds of dollars.
I ran back to the driver’s seat and called my mother’s house. The phone was off the hook. She was taking a nap. I called her cell phone, which was in her purse in another room, plus she’d taken out her hearing aids. I tried 13 times.
I couldn’t imagine taking the ramps into the stadium-sized rental center, finding and trusting a lost and found, and leaving them for someone to pick up. It would even be hard to lug them, with my rolling bag and computer backpack, into the complex.
I would just have to miss my plane. So should I still return the car? Go to the airport, try to rebook? I’d need to come back tomorrow. Wait, did someone just pick up my mother’s cell phone?
I yelled, as loudly as I could, “Mom!” at least six times. Nothing. I hung up.
She called back. The smartwatch someone gave her, buzzing on her wrist beneath the pillow, had awakened her.
“No, don’t miss your plane!” she said. “I’ll meet you.”
While my mother, a nonagenarian, still lives in her own home, these days she tries not to drive, saving her errands for a twice-weekly visiting aide. But the roads were dry and she knew the way, a straight shot.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go to the Earleigh Heights fire station.”
I hastily backtracked 12 or so miles to the fire house, banged on a locked door, and explained the situation to the two inscrutable firefighters who appeared. Just as they nodded “yes” to my leaving the ramps, we heard honking from the highway, and into the lot swept a gray sedan, behind the wheel a triumphant, white-haired woman.
I hefted one ramp into her car and turned to see a firefighter right behind me with the other. Bellowing thanks, I whipped back onto the highway… handed back the rental car, hurried through the garage and lobby… and darted into the shuttle.
Others boarded. Go, go, go. The driver shut the door and the bus lurched forward. I stared at my phone. My flight was boarding. I was never, ever going to make it.
The bus stopped three times at the doors for other airlines. At mine, I bolted and ran to security, practically elbowed through, then ran all the way to my gate — people scattering, some laughing. Still 20 gates away, I heard, “Last call for Denver!”
Now limping, I peered ahead. The gate! The door to the passageway was closed. But there was someone at the desk. Huffing, sweating, my nose running, I waved my free arm wildly. The woman picked up the phone, and said into it, “One more!”
That was my holiday miracle. I’d been stuck overnight in Denver on the way East, missing my connection due to a delayed originating flight, but that night I got home to Carbondale, where snow had fallen while I was gone.
I always tell people never to put anything — travel mug, sunglasses, gloves — on a car roof. It’s one of my rules. As is: Never leave any place, like a restaurant table, without turning around for a last look. That one will also save you sunglasses, jackets too.
And try to appreciate luck when you have it, and being here. My mother says never to wish time away. She doesn’t even like to hear someone say, “I can’t wait for the weekend.”
I also always say I learn something new every day. To the tally I will add, as we move into a new year: Always check the hatchback.