The longest moments I have ever experienced during my lifetime have all involved my children. One was when my three-day-old son was being admitted to the ER and a nurse was mangling his tiny hand while trying to insert an IV...and he stopped crying. I panicked, thinking the nurse had killed him. Another time was when my middle child told me she was running up to join some relatives and somehow slipped away from the group. I found her a few minutes later, in the pool to which we were all headed, struggling to keep her head above the water. It's moments like these that strike terror into my heart.
Up until today, I have never had an abject-terror moment with my firstborn. Yes, I have had times when I was scared for her sake, or worried about her. However, she was always the child who held my hand at all times in the store, stayed right by me at playgroups, and was fairly timid when it came to going off on her own. It is difficult to be completely panicked about a child who is, for the most part, healthy, well-behaved, and a Mama's Girl. Quite frankly, if I had known how freaked out my middle child would make me when she tries to bolt, I would never have worried that my eldest was stuck to me like glue.
Anyway, getting back to today... I walk my children to school. Unlike a number of parents, I don't drop them off and run. (To where am I going to run? Back home to vacuum? Get real!) The students line up outside the building and all walk in when it's time to start school. If it's raining or too cold, they go inside, but that was not the case this morning. I hold my son's hand while we walk, since he is one of my two children who bolt. (Trust me when I say you never want to lose a small child on school grounds where there are approximately seven zillion children running amok. The same goes for amusement parks, etc.) He does not have to get dropped off until about fifteen minutes after his sisters go into the building, so we follow the girls to their lines and wait behind the students until the elementary school goes inside and it is time to head to the preschool entrance.
This morning, both girls split to go into their respective lines, and my son and I walked around the group of students to stand behind them. I did my normal head-check count to make sure both girls made it to their proper lines. After all, I lose visual contact with them while I am walking around all of the other kids. My eldest was not in line, nor was she anywhere in sight.
I did not panic initially. I thought perhaps she had ducked down to tie her shoe. Or maybe she had gone to another line to ask if we were walking her friend home from school today. I walked closer to her grade level lines, ducked down to see if she had the shoe issue, peeked between groups of students who were clustered around something, and otherwise verified that she had, indeed, completely disappeared during the ten seconds it took for me to situate myself behind everyone. That was about when I started to panic.
I started scanning the cars that were driving away from the drop-off lane, the groups of children that were walking up the sidewalks, and everywhere I could possibly imagine looking for my daughter. I could not see her or her purple coat anywhere. Right about when I was looking around for the police officer who is stationed at the school every morning, I spied her casually walking up to her line from the sidewalk. Since I had already walked that way with her, and had seen her go off to her line just a few minutes before, I rushed over to her to ask her where on earth she had been, since I was worried sick about her disappearance.
It turns out that my child found out she was supposed to stop at the main office to drop off the goodies she brought for her choir party after school today. Instead of telling me, she just took off as soon as my back was turned. That one poor decision on her part led to one of the longest moments of my life as I worried she had been abducted in the chaos that surrounds getting six hundred or so students into school in the morning.
I never thought I would have to worry about losing my nine-year-old, who still sticks closely to me when we go somewhere. I thank God that she was alright.
No comments:
Post a Comment