The Gift of Gab

When Emma was 7 and Sarah was 3, we decided to travel down to visit Peter’s parents in the Washington, D.C. area via Amtrak. I’ll admit that this was my idea. Somehow, I thought taking the train would make this trip that we routinely took by car seem like a new adventure. It turned out to be more of a cautionary tale on toilet training.

You see Sarah was newly toilet trained. I thought this factor was a check in the pro column for taking the train, but I had overlooked two things. I had forgotten that on the train, Sarah would not be strapped into a car seat. And, I had forgotten that newly toilet-trained toddlers have a fascination bordering on obsession with public bathrooms. These two overlooked, but very important facts, made our train trips a different kind of adventure than we had bargained for. (Bear with me on this. There is a part about Emma)

Since Sarah was not strapped into a car seat, Peter and I took turns accompanying Sarah through each car of the train to visit every single one of the bathrooms on the train. There were multiple delays on the trip down to Washington, so our 4-hour trip turned into a 6- hour trip. That gave Sarah ample time to visit every bathroom on the train at least 100 times each. We traveled back and forth through the cars of the train so many times that the other passengers on the train got to know us. It became like a re-enactment of the regular bar scene from the TV show Cheers. We’d enter the car and a bunch of passengers would look up and cheer “Sarah!!”

On the trip back home, our family was seated near a man who was an elementary principal in a southern state. He was on vacation and was headed to visit friends in New York. About an hour into our trip he struck up a conversation with us. Peter and I were distracted by our need to keep track of whose turn it was it was to accompany Sarah to the bathroom(s), so Emma took the conversation ball and ran with it. For the next three hours she gabbed to this southern educator about just about everything under the sun: school, dance, music, her collections, her family, her town, her friends, you name it. Had we thought she was bothering this kind man, we would have intervened; but he was fully and happily engaged in his conversation with Emma. In fact, when we got to New York and had to part ways, I think he was really sorry that their conversation had to end.

I don’t know that man’s name. I can’t even remember what state he was from. But I can tell you this with great certainty – he has never forgotten Emma.