Eleven Years and Still Counting

When my brother was four or five years old, my mom took us downtown and during the course of our shopping trip the three of us got on a crowded elevator. My brother was never a shy or coy kid and when he had a question to ask he’d belted it out and that day, in between floors, he was curious. “Momma,” he said, pointing to another person on the elevator, “Why doesn’t that lady wash her face?” My mom was mortified but the black lady laughed. It was the 1940s and this anecdote speaks volumes about the times and the fact that a kid from the suburbs could be almost old enough for kindergarten before seeing his very first non-white person.

My second memorable elevator ride was in the Empire State Building---memorable because it was the setting for a full-blown panic attack. Not my first, but the worst one of my entire life. It was in the 1950s, a time when I was in love with art deco architecture and I had been looking forward to this trip to the public observatory at the top. Unfortunately, once I got up there I found out that I had no more love of heights than I did for being locked inside a “windowless box” grinding and groaning its way to the top of that beautiful building.

Twenty-some years later, when Don and I was in Chicago about to get on the elevator at the Sears Tower, I could feel another major panic attack coming on so I made an excuse and refused to get in. My ancestor, Elisha Otis, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, was probably rolling over in his grave because of my behavior. But Don had a different reaction because as it turned out that elevator---which he got on to but I didn’t---got stuck between floors and it took a half hour to free him and the other passengers. When he finally got off he was in awe of me, thinking that I was clairvoyant and saw that event coming. I never corrected that impression. We were newly in love and I wasn’t about to start punching gem stones out of my princess crown.

It was shortly after Don’s stroke in 2000 when we had the next memorial ride on an elevator. Don was being transferred from one facility to another and the ambulance-cab driver in charge of transferring Don didn’t get his wheelchair far enough into an elevator and the door shut on his toes. The elevator car moved several feet while Don’s foot was going upward before the driver realized what she’d done and pushed the emergency stop button. Then it took awhile for us to get Don’s toes freed from the rubber door seals because the door wouldn’t open in between floors.

My last memorable elevator experience happened at the Christian college where Don was taking speech therapy classes. He’d spent the morning trying to teach himself how to swear; specifically to say “Jesus Christ!” to someone who’d cut me off in traffic only it kept coming out as “Jesus Crust.” He knew it sounded wrong but he couldn’t figure out how to say it correctly. Don also rolled the words ‘Jesus Cuss’ around on his tongue a few times and finally went back to ‘Jesus Crust’ all the while giving me ‘The Look’ that said, “Help me out here, woman!”

“Don’t look at me, Buddy-Boy,” I told him. “I’m not helping you learn how to swear.”

Finally, the conversation was all but forgotten until we were in communications building and was waiting for the slowest elevator on the face of the planet when I remarked: “Boy, is this elevator slow.”

“Jesse Crush!” he swore in front of a hall full of students and a few professors.

This January marks eleven years since Don passed and even after all this time I still miss his sense of humor, the way he could make me laugh even after he lost his speech. I miss his looking at me like I still have a few rubies left in my princess crown. He was my best friend, my sounding board for 42 year and that turns everything I do in the January days leading up to the 18^th into a trip down Memory Lane including a simple ride on an elevator.   ©

 

Note: if you got deja vu reading this that means you've been poking around in my archives. I originally wrote all but the last paragraph shortly after Don died. I ran out of time or desire to write something new this week. That switch will flip after the 18th has passed, I'm sure.