Lesson Learned from a Porta-Potty

by dalisonwatt

I was following a porta-potty for a while yesterday on the highway.  Seriously, I was right behind it.  It’s door was facing me.  The brand name was United.  Quite obviously it was attached to a truck moving in the other direction.  Then this morning, when I hopped on a different highway, I found myself behind a little mail truck.  Also facing me, also attached to a larger truck which was moving the opposite way.

I began to wonder if there was a life lesson here.

Just to drive the point home (literally), when I was actually on my way home today I found myself staring at – well, I’m not sure what it was.  Some kind of lift vehicle or something.  But again, its headlights were facing towards me, facing backwards, attached to a larger truck which was moving forward.

There it is.

My friend Johanna’s daughter was having major surgery yesterday at Mass General Hospital.  Even with my new-found skill of driving to MGH, I still considered taking the train to sit with them for a while during the surgury.  I texted Johanna my plan before I went to bed.  In the morning I sent her a new text, “I always have more courage in the morning.  I am driving in.”  So with freshly baked cookies in hand, after getting Alexa on her school van, I drove off.

We sat there in the large waiting room and joked around.  At one point Johanna and I were in such a fit of giggles, I am sure if we had dared to glance up, the nice volunteer ladies would have given us their most stern, disapproving looks.  Later, in a more serious moment Johanna was trying to thank me for coming.  Please.  After all she has done for our family and for Alexa, it was the very least I could do.  “I just wasn’t sure I was the best person for the job,” I told her.  “I cry too easily in situations like this.”

I told her being in hospital waiting rooms brought me back to the 15 days we spent at the Boston Children’s Hospital when Alexa was 9 months old.  She had bacterial meningitis and almost died.  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I had to learn these things the hard way, from experience.  When you go through something with your child, you learn you need people to be there for you.”

After my father passed away in November, my siblings and I talked about what we learned from the experience: we would never let another friend or family member lose a loved one and not respond.  We would be there.  We would do something because now we understood even the smallest acts of kindness can mean A LOT.

On this Valentine’s Day I woke up praying for Johanna’s daughter.  As Alexa climbed on board the van I was still thinking about what I’ve learned looking backwards.  And I thought about the record I would like to finally straighten out.

What you go through in life does not make you stronger.  (OK, yes, a certain amount of grit and determination must be acquired.)  What you go through in life makes you weaker, but in all the right ways.  It breaks your heart.  Your heart becomes softer.  Some part of your heart holds on to what you’ve been through.  Your body also remembers.  Your hand instinctively reaches out.  It tries to help pull things forward.

I don’t think there could be a better reminder of compassion than a forward-facing truck carrying a porta-potty backwards, do you?