Mind the Gap

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

For Christmas last winter my kids got together and gave me a two-week cruise to the British Isles. As a veteran teacher of literature, it was an adventure I’d long looked forward to. We spent time in Ireland, Scotland, England, and even a day in France.

While Daughter #1 and I were riding an escalator at Heathrow Airport (London) headed to our connection with the bus which would take us to South Hampton dock and our ship, an elderly woman stepped on the electric stairs behind us with what I assume were her husband and a couple of female family members. About halfway up, she apparently lost her balance and fell backwards headfirst. Her husband tried to stop her descent, but the force of her body knocked him against the railing. Below, a couple of airport employees saw the fall and raced for the stairs which kept implacably moving upward, despite the efforts of the group of riders behind us trying desperately to lift the woman to her feet. I could see blood pooling on the stairs–I assumed from somewhere on her head. Because there are no obvious emergency buttons on an escalator, the steady movement of the machine was an unintended obstacle to their struggles.

My daughter and I turned at once to see if there was something we could do to help? By that time the employees had managed to lift the woman and somehow carry her down the stairs against the rising mechanism. As we watched, they took her to a nearby bench and laid her down across it, cradling her head on a bundle of jackets contributed by the rescuers. I could hear someone on a walkie talkie calling for help. Then our own ride up the stairs blocked our view of those below.

On our trip I thought several times of that injured woman. Because a couple of the ports into which we sailed were too small to handle a ship as large as ours, we had to take small tenders from the boat to the shore. Every time we boarded one, there were two ship employees standing on either side warning us to “mind the gap” between the platform off the ship and the entrance to the smaller boat. I heard that same phrase repeated over and over from the loudspeaker when I moved from the concrete waiting area to the doorway of the “tube” in and out of the airport to our hotel in London. I wondered if perhaps in an instant of miscalculation, the woman on the escalator had failed to “mind the gap” and fallen as a result?

It struck me that a good many people in my life have “minded the gap” for me when I was too naïve or too ornery or simply too oblivious to see what was going on around me. As a sophomore in college, a boy I didn’t know much about asked me out of a date. I was at BYU and to be truthful, I had dated a lot of boys who were looking for a nice Mormon gal to settle down with. I was young and way too trusting. My roommates were leery of this kid and warned me not to go out with him, but with the blithe ignorance of the unaware, I assured them, I’d be fine. I don’t remember where we went, but we double dated with one of his buddies. After we all stopped for ice cream, he invited me to his apartment to watch a movie. The other couple headed off somewhere else. It was still early, so I said, “Sure, why not?” I don’t remember much about that night, but I do remember none of his roommates were home, and I started to feel very uncomfortable alone with this boy. I was young and dumb, and it didn’t occur to me to just get up and leave. Instead, I became more and more uneasy.

We watched the movie for a while, he moving closer and closer, and I trying to slide unobtrusively further and further away. My anxiety antenna rose to high alert. Then, unexpectedly, there was a knock at his door. When he opened it, I was startled to see a couple of my roommates. “Come on,” they said. “We’re here to give you a ride home.” As far as I knew, none of them knew this guy personally and certainly had no idea where he lived. But they later told me when I had left the house, they “felt” something wasn’t right. Calling a chain of acquaintances over a several hours, they figured out where I must be, and without a second thought, they came to my rescue. Ignoring my lame excuses, they hustled me out the door. It was only later that I realized they had taken me home to safety. They had, in fact, “minded the gap” for me when I wasn’t able to see the danger for myself. (Is it any wonder that I still cherish their friendship after more than 50 years?)

I used to tell my friends that my parenting method was to act as a sheepdog for my children, barking at them when they came too close to the cliffs or headed in a direction which would lead them away from the safety of the flock, but now I’m reconsidering. Instead, maybe after all these years what I have been trying to do is help my children recognize what a threat the misstep of unfortunate choices can be and offering a safe shoulder of support when–like their mother–they too fail to “mind the gap”.