Highways and crises

Except for the fire in the trash can, our visit with the grandbabies was uneventful.

Despite gas prices, we used the motor home to drive to Leesburg, Va. to see our daughter Jean’s family. (And here I feel obliged to explain that Jean doesn’t have enough bedrooms to go around. Moreover, the camper door provides Dave refuge from the pandemonium in the house.)

This was our Christmas visit. Sure, I know Christmas doesn’t usually come in May, but last fall and winter we had a series of medical concerns that needed to be seen to. We waited them out and by the time we had a calendar unobstructed by cryptic notes like “S Dr. B 2 pm” and “D Dr. G 9:45 npo,” it was mid-May.

I agreed that the little boys would just get confused if we tried to make it a “Christmas” gift event, so we just declared it a Grandma/Grandpa visit. Samuel, 4, passed out presents and Baby-U snatched them occasionally when his brother had his back turned. It made for a raucous afternoon.

It’s a long, grueling drive from our house to theirs, and this one was replete with traffic woes. In total, we were driven off the Interstates to countryside detours three times, coming and going. Traffic was heavy, and for some reason the various powers-that-be closed all lanes of U.S. 15. In all our years traveling on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s magnificent network of freeways, I don’t remember ever being shuttled clear off. Less than 12 or so miles from Leesburg on U.S. 15, a sheriff’s deputy directed us onto an unmarked dirt road. Jean was waiting dinner, so we called her and got a workable route around the crash site.

One such detour was actually pleasant. At about the mid-point of our visit we had driven to see my Aunt Mary Jane, recently turned 90, in Carlisle, Pa. and on our way back to Jean’s we were put off U.S. 15 at Gettysburg. A short, rural drive, and the trees parted as we turned left in front Huber Hall, the freshman girls’ dorm when I was there. Past the president’s residence, TKE house, the old railroad station, and we looped the traffic circle past the old Gettysburg Hotel.

Fresh paint and romantic history made the town all the more beautiful, but we couldn’t linger.

We had not been to see our little boys since their big sister’s wedding last July, and how they’d grown. Samuel is getting some help from a speech therapist a couple of times a week. His mother thinks his noisiness may be partly because he gets frustrated looking for the right word in the right part of the sentence. He was born a little early – who knows how these things happen?

Baby-U – aw, nuts, I suppose I have to start calling him Uriah. He refers to himself as “the baby.”

He is beyond precious. He’s a little quieter than his brother and while he isn’t remotely chubby, I think he will be sturdy enough to take care of himself. He’s almost coquettish, tilting his head, squinting those dark blue eyes and narrowing his lips down to a “hoo-hoo-hoo.” I don’t think he has ever conversed with an owl, but he does a passable imitation of a barred owl in mating season.

The day we were off visiting my aunt, a fire started in Jean’s kitchen trash can. She had already started the grill for chicken and dashed out to her little winter garden patch for her salad. (There was salad all winter long, protected by a plastic tarp draped over some stakes.)

When she returned to the house, Jean noticed that there seemed to be a lot of smoke, presumably from the grill, but when she opened the sliding screen door, smoke rolled out of the kitchen. One glance around the kitchen was enough to spot the source: the trash can at the end of the chopping block island.

As she was telling the story, I couldn’t help laughing. She’s been a firefighter for so long that the second thing she did was to identify the fire as Class A. That means it’s fed by your ordinary every-day household items like paper, cardboard, or cloth, and is best put out with water.

(What was the first thing she did? Determine that the boys were safe, of course.)

There was no actual flame, but still she carried the can out to the backyard. Satisfied it was out, she began her investigation. The likeliest source was a light flame under her tea-kettle. The other three burners had had their handles removed and out of reach of little people.

Jean could not determine exactly what happened, obviously, in a trashcan three-quarters full of food scraps and paper towels. She believes that Samuel put a towel close to the lit burner and when it ignited, thought he’d better throw it away.

She kept her interrogation low key, knowing how quickly a 4-year-old perp can get hysterical. Hard enough to get him to talk, she became shaky herself now that she had some time for what-ifs. What if he had just flung it, and it found a more flammable place to feed, like on a computer table loaded with the daily detritus of a computer science instructor? Or what if he lobbed it onto his little brother’s smooth pink body? What if – but that’s enough.

She couldn’t get a confession out of him, but she’s been a mother long enough to recognize guilt when she sees it.

The boy followed her around the rest of the day, saying, “I love you, Mommy. I love you.”