Travel Companions

The vacuum cleaners in our home not only have their own room, but they also get to go on regular field trips.

Our older son has his very favorite vac, a red Dirt Devil upright, which stands faithfully at his bedside. More often that not, this is his chosen companion. For when life has been greatly celebrated or a thing to be feared, that vacuum has been there. Many times, I have tucked its red plastic casing in under the covers right beside our son at night. That vac is his buddy.

However, there are some others--like the Bissell Little Green Wet Vac or the black Bissell upright--that carry with them some very nice qualities. One can never have too many companions. It's good to have a posse.

Picking the lucky machine that gets to leave the house with him on a given day is a chore. Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc. He scans the crowd of vacs. Surveys. Thinks. We stand at the door impatiently until the selection is finally made and we can at last walk out the door, vacuum in hand.

The vacuum fits quite nicely between the two seats in the middle row of our mini van. I sometimes view it as my third child, sitting dutifully, flanked by our two sons. It stays in the car waiting for us while we run errands. However, if we are visiting grandparents or are on a rare stay in a hotel, the vacuum accompanies us out of the car!

When our son was young and we traveled, there was an element of embarrassment in bringing our own vacuum into a hotel. My husband would wait until the dark of night to retrieve it from our car. Meanwhile, our son was anxious and clearly needing the security of his treasured item. As time passed and the vacuums became more a part of our lives, I learned to first accept them and then to embrace them. To be embarrassed by them somehow felt to me as though I was embarrassed by my son, and I am not in the least embarrassed by him.

These days, I can walk through the lobby of a hotel in the broad daylight with one of his vacuums. If people look at me, I can shoot a look right back at them as if to say, "Where's yours?"