SANDWICH GENERATION: AIRPORT + WHEELCHAIR

Travel Challenges For The Sandwich Generation. And Rewards.

If your Ma is 90 and likes new places, you’ve got to keep up with her.

I’ve flown to Spain and back with my wife and mother in law.

They would have gone with or without me.

Travel by itself is enough challenge; getting on an airplane with hopes of getting off.

That’s me.

Add an adventurous baby boomer wife and a WWII WRNS signaler mother in law who’s been around the world a few times and it’s three times the fun.

Recently we all flew to Phoenix Sky Harbor.

One thing we’ve learned, besides Judy getting all kinds of respect from most everyone, is always reserve a wheelchair for every departure and arrival.

Always.

Your loved one says, “Listen Bucko, stop treating me like an old lady on her dying breath. Your hovering sucks the air out of every room I’m in.” Reserve the wheelchair.

Now you’re in the Sandwich Generation.

Explain the idea of saving their energy for a Starbucks stop. (Grande de-cafe skinny vanilla latte.)

Talk about the long walk to the next terminal.

No need to get into the medical reasons for a wheelchair, which is why you want a wheelchair.

Reserve that wheelchair and you also get the wheelchair driver. Let the wheelchair driver do his job, boomer. Pushing a wheelchair, or not, isn’t a challenge to your manhood.

Even if it feels like a challenge? It’s not. You might be the meat in the Sandwich Generation, but you don’t always need to prove it.

Give it a break and look forward to the guys you’ll meet with the wheelchair.

We rode the shuttle from the rental car return to Terminal 4 on the way back to Portland. I heaved bags like a farm kid loading hay bales into a barn.

All the bags into the car, out of the car, onto the shuttle bus, off the shuttle bus. Got a good sweat going like I do on back day at the gym.

Sandwich Generation back sweat for the flight to Portland. Lovely.

I’m on the walkway holding my shirt off the sweat, surrounded by our bags. The perimeter is secure, the cargo safe. That’s all I notice.

Everyone leaves the shuttle, walks off to their flights. The bus pulls away. We’re still standing there, three of us.

Make that four.

A scruffy guy sits in a wheelchair smoking a cigarette. I didn’t notice him until now. Just a skinny guy in a wheelchair smoking.

Wife says to no one, “We reserved a wheelchair.”

MIL answers to know one, “We certainly did.”

I think the wheelchair belongs to the guy in the wheelchair, but still ask, “Are you waiting for someone who reserved a wheelchair?”

That’s our traditional communication chain of command.

He puts out his cigarette, blows smoke out the end, taps it back in his pack, and jumps up fast.

“If you reserved a wheelchair, then this is it.”

Felt like a stroke of good luck. Off we went.

He rolled the women through check points that made me stand in line. My new friends was a profiler.

The wheelchair is Sandwich Generation magic.

At the next bottle neck he branched off an overloaded series of stanchions to one with only three men waiting for the next ticket counter opening.

“Who are they?” he asked the line guy.

“Federal law.”

“FBI?”

“Probably U.S. Marshalls.”

“Probably park rangers. Whoever they are, they don’t belong in my wheelchair line.”

He pushed Judy forward, announcing, “Wheelchair in the wheelchair line. Wheelchair in the wheelchair line. Coming through. Wheelchair.”

They turned. They looked. Annoyed, like ‘Don’t you know who we are?’ Then they saw Judy and moved aside.

It happens all the time with her, interactions you couldn’t plan or imagine, but they happen.

She and Willis the wheelchair driver became their own little club.

They jumped every line together. They bumped everyone in their way.

Willis knew the drill and took Judy for a great ride.

Very rewarding.

Remind people in their 80’a and 90’s they need not feel bad about a wheelchair.

There’s a reason so many terminals install treadmill transporters and drive those little side-seater carts.

Point to the people on the treadmills who can’t walk it out.

Most are younger than them.

If you travel with your parents, their friends, or your own older friends, get that wheelchair.

Have you had the Sandwich Generation wheelchair in the airport experience?

Do tell, please.