Summer Fun for Three Sisters part 2
Another adventure was when one of my big sisters accidentally was locked in the Greyhound bathroom. We were on a newer double decker bus and we had never been on one before. You can see so much more of the countryside up there because no large trucks blocked our view out the windows. My two sisters went up first to see if there were two seats either sis by side or in front of each other and we claimed them as ours. What a difference it was up there. We saw everything in front of us and on either side. The only bad thing was that there was no bathroom up there.
One of my sisters asked Mother if she could go down to the bathroom and she got permission to go. She was not gone very long when a lady came up the stairs telling my Mother that a daughter was locked in the bathroom. What a commotion there was because my sister had gotten locked in the bathroom. The lock was a bit different than ours at home. with the help of Mother calming her down and sister figuring out she would not be in there forever my brave big sister unlocked the door and the whole bus clapped their hands and cheered her on for using a level head.
Another time when this sister was a few years older she saved the day for all of us. We were in New York City with a four hour layover. We actually used the big beautiful ladies room that actually had an attendant standing in there to help us if we needed. Mother had us wash really well and we changed our clothes also. Mother always had a plastic bag tucked in her backpack for our used clothes. That was a magic backpack she carried with all the things she had tucked away for us. We had eaten and cleaned up and we still had a couple of hours waiting for our next bus so we decided to go exploring in New York City. Now let me tell you our Mother generous and loving lady that she is extremely Geographically Challenged. She took notes on the bus station address and remembered the shop windows and also tried to stay in a four block area but of course we veered off looking at the wonders of this big city then somehow we were lost.
Oh dear and oh my was she ever worried about not getting back to the bus terminal. She told us to stop because she was lost and had to think about retracing our steps. My sister that had been locked in that bathroom a few years later to Mother she remembered how to get back to the bus terminal. What a sister with a great memory. She successfully guided us right to the terminal pointing out the buildings and streets we had passed on our walking tour of New York City. Later on this same sister traveled all around the world and never got lost. Her memory is amazing! Mother never worried about us getting lost again when we four were together. Later on when Mother was thirty nine years of age, our father finally gave in to Mother's wishes that she wanted to learn to drive and get a drivers license. Getting the license was easy and so was the test but whenever our Mother ventured out of her safe zone she was forever getting lost. She always had a notebook on the seat with drawings of where she was going
TO
with little landmarks to guide her and on the back of the page was the
RETURN
instructions on the back noting landmarks
Once our Mother even got lost and ended up in the wrong state! She said she knew she was suppose to be in Nevada but got all mixed up in detour instructions and some how ended up in Utah. She knew she was terribly lost in the traffic and that she was tired, hungry and it was turning dark so she just checked into a nice motel, got a nice room and had a great dinner. the next morning someone helped her rewrite her notes and she was back on the road with fresh notes. She took it all in stride saying that you do meet the nicest people when you are out on the road. She always has a camera with her so she does get some awesome pictures of the countryside.
©Julia A Knaake