Until you have kids, you never
really know what fear is. I’m talking real fear here, not some drive-in monster
movie eek, followed by popcorn and soda, but the kind of fear that brings down giants,
that tears at your soul and summons every bad demon within 1,000 miles to live,
for a time, in your very heart.
The kind of fear that can be
caused by only one thing. A missing child.
Almost every parent has
experienced that “Where’s Johnny?” moment at least once, the moment your ears
frantically demand an “I’m here, mom!” from across the parking lot.
Among my nefarious offspring, it
was my daughter, Aubreii, who was the real escape artist. She went missing so
often it was miracle I didn’t just start letting her find her own way home. But
I didn’t. I’m her father; I was genetically predisposed to walk the
neighborhood in abject terror until she turned up.
She always did. But not always
right away.
If you’re thinking I was a
terrible, neglectful parent, you probably don’t have kids of your own. I kept a
close on eye on the monsters, from birth through tenth grade or so, after which
I let up my vigilance, but only in small increments over several years.
By the time she was five years
old, my daughter could have escaped Attica or some death row super-max with
ease. She once tunneled – yes, tunneled
– under a fence surrounding our back yard. She had to move a pile of boulders
larger than her head – I’d piled them against the fence specifically to thwart her
escape attempts – before she could begin digging her way to freedom. She used a
sandbox shovel. She was four at the time.
I swear, the kid carried wire
cutters in her diaper.
My sons, Jordan and Jim Bob, were
a different story. They followed me around like baby ducks. They’re both grown
men now and I can probably still tell you exactly where they are at any time on
any given day.
That’s what made it so scary the
day Jordan went missing.
He and his sister (James was
still several years off) were outside playing hide-and-seek with some neighbor
kids. As was usually the case, they were outside, then inside, then outside,
then inside, outside-inside-outside-inside – you get the picture. There was a
lot of door-banging going on, but most of that was drowned out by the sound of
screaming first-graders. So it didn’t bother me much.
It was summer vacation, getting
on toward dinner time. Eventually, Annie, Kristen, Leonard, Sam and all the
other kids were hollered home for supper.
Aubreii rolled into the kitchen (literally;
she wore little pink, plastic roller skates that entire summer) with winded enquiries
as to what Chez Dad would be serving
that evening. She was gratified to learn pizza was again on the menu, since I
was on deadline for a small magazine article and hadn’t had time to cook.
“Get your brother and wash up,” I
told her. She was gone a couple minutes. When she returned, she said the words
every parent fears more than zombies, the apocalypse, and reruns of “Dancing
With the Stars.”
“I can’t find him.”
“What do you mean? Did you call
outside for him?”
She admitted she hadn’t, so I
did. Nothing.
“Did you check his bedroom?” I
asked. She had, but I checked again anyway. Nothing.
I walked around the house, then
around the neighborhood, bellowing his name every five seconds or so. A few
neighbors stepped out their front doors.Then a few more. This was a
neighborhood made up of young families and it didn’t take long for the search
party to form.
The search expanded,
block-by-block, the panic growing. Doors were knocked on. Questions were asked.
“Have you seen this little boy? Blonde hair, blue eyes, six years old? Probably
picking his nose?”
The police arrived and joined the
search. Two cars, four officers. Going door-to-door, asking questions which,
frankly, nearly killed me: “Have you seen any strange cars in the neighborhood?
Anyone driving slowly? Any strangers?”
Lord, I’ll tell ya, it’s been 30
years and I can still barely write about it without a trace of that old,
familiar terror rising like a bubble in my throat.
One officer asked to see his
bedroom, even though I’d already checked there. It was while picking through
the laundry hamper that the cop found Jordan, napping soundly among the towels
and sheets.
If you’re a parent, you already
know what I felt at that moment. If you’re not, no words of mine can ever
convey that feeling.
Fear. It goes part and parcel
with parenthood. And here’s the part that’s most awful, that nobody tells you
about until it’s too late: It doesn’t end when they grow up and move out. Like
life itself, it endures.
Now go hug your kid.
(616) 730-1414
No comments:
Post a Comment