Moving up in life

The first time I did it, I must have been about nine years old, with all the blasé snootiness of a nine-year-old who used ‘attitude’ as her second name. I was, of course, a little nervous, but held tight to my father’s finger and stepped into the breach…well, it was not quite that, but close enough for the definition. I stuck my neck out, leaped into the unknown, reached over the abyss and whatever else I cannot think of to describe something I have never done before. It was exhilarating to know that I could do it, like the little red engine that huffed and puffed its way up and down hills, and even more so to know that where I succeeded fairly easily and quickly, so many more, older and wiser than me, couldn’t manage it at all.

So some years later, when I was nowhere near nine but almost twice that age and far more snooty, blasé and attitude-laden, I came across it again. This time I was seasoned at the game, but the person I was with, was not. The story happened this way….

At nine, I stepped on my first ever escalator in the airport at Athens. It was not too scary and easy enough to master, especially because no one even remotely thought that it would be anything else. It was all a taken for granted thing – my parents stepped on it easily, and I just followed, Father’s finger being the guiding force. When the steps moved upwards, I did, too, smoothly, without faltering. It was as if since no one else made a fuss about it, I didn’t either. And since no one else hesitated, where was the need for me to do so? Since no one had trouble stepping on and, more importantly, stepping off, it was a cinch for me, too.

But at about 16, it was a different story. For me – and everyone else that I knew – an escalator was not an object of awe, fear, dread or any of those delightfully negativistic emotions. It was all about convenience, getting from down to up or, on some occasions, up to down, without too much exertion or effort. We – my friends and I – hopped on and off and ran up and down the moving metal stairs with no thought of having problems at all. And so we didn’t. So when my great-aunt came to visit and was confronted with an escalator for what was perhaps the first time in her life, it was a time for me to detach myself from my family and pretend I knew nothing of anyone involved in the incident.

It was, then, for me, a matter of intense and utter embarrassment. We were at a large and comfortably equipped shopping centre (this was before the time of malls in this country) and needed to go upstairs to the floor above. The easy way was to use the escalator. The elevator was crowded and my mother was claustrophobic, while my great-aunt couldn’t really run up the stairs like the rest of us usually did. So we talked her into trying to step on the moving stairway. She was game, poor old lady, and walked up to the contraption, ready and willing. But the spirit was weak and balked. Big time. She looked at the steps emerging from the belly of the machine and quailed. She moved her foot forward once, then back again. Then, holding tightly on to my mother’s hand, she tried again. No go. She backed off, this time a little further away. My father got into the act and urged her to give it another shot. Valiantly, she stepped up again, holding on to Mum on one side and Papa on the other….and she just couldn’t.

With the unforgiving mind of a teenager, I had walked away, pretending great interest in the stores that ringed the central well of the building. I saw the crowds building behind my family and heard the comments being made about the “old lady” who was “mad”. And, where now I would have quelled any hecklers with a look or waded into the fray to demolish anyone who made any nasty remarks about me and mine, then I did all I could to make it clear that they were nothing to do with me. Finally, my aunt went up in the elevator with my father. My mother and I walked up the stairs.

It took a few years for me to be ashamed of what I had done. But the process of realising my smallness and silliness had to be gone through, painfully and slowly. It was called ‘growing up’. And now I hope I have.