What will we do without the chamber pot? ~ August 14, 1986

David Heiller

When I got home from work last Friday, I stopped dead in my tracks as I stepped on the porch. My eyes beheld a strange, white object, with holes and levers, a handle, a pour spout, drain spout, and round seat. It stood three feet off the ground, and was made of heavy white plastic, like a five-gallon bucket.

Just then, my mother-in-law came out of the house. “Hello, David,” she said with more confidence than she normally uses when greeting me at our house. In fact, her voice had a tone of victory in it, not unlike my wife’s voice when she points out a mistake I made in the checkbook.

“Hello,” I answered in a voice that echoed my deflating spirit. I kicked at the white object, lifted it off the porch to feel its heft. “Where’d you get it?”

“From the neighbors, the Pudases,” she answered in that same, aggravatingly cheerful voice. “They had it in their cabin, and they don’t use it anymore, so they gave it to me for only $15.”

Grandma relaxed better when she wasn't thinking 
about chamber pots or outhouses.

“Hmph,” I said, walking into the house.

I trudged upstairs, thoughts of my fun weekend with my mother-in-law sinking with each step. I thought back to the last time she visited, in October. She had been relegated to the downstairs sofa bed, the one recommended by chiropractors because it gives them so much more business. That was about the time the field mice were looking for winter quarters, downstairs, near the couch. Lorely had discovered them while using the chamber pot in the dim morning light. Our cat caught one later and laid it proudly on the hearth for her to marvel.

Having only an outhouse, I thought at the time, does have its advantages. Not only do mice hang around chamber pots at vulnerable times, they like to visit outhouses. That same weekend, my mother-in-law was seated precariously on one seat of our two-seater, when a mouse ran up the wall next to her leg. She didn’t tell me about that till later, after she knew it was too late for me to write about it in the newspaper. It’s never too late for that.

The old two-seater. Bane of Lorely's visits.

So when I heard of my mother-in-law’s annual pilgrimage to our house last weekend, I thought another fun time would ensue. There would be plenty of food, pop, ice cream, steaks, birthday presents. She had promised to do some wallpapering. We would watch TV, play cards, argue, have a laugh. And, I thought, there would be the chamber pot, and the outhouse, and maybe I would even live-trap some field mice to perk things up a bit at night. Plenty of material for a good newspaper column.

So when saw the white heavy plastic contraption on the porch last Friday, the fun went away like morning fog melted by that cheerful voice.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” I asked when I got back downstairs.

My mother-in-law’s voice turned defensive. “It’s going to stay here, and it’s going to get used every time I visit.” That “every time I visit” got me worried. Maybe those mice, that chamber pot and outhouse bit, wasn’t so funny after all.
But what could I say. The Port-a-Potty had arrived. And life at our house with my mother-in-law will never be the same again.