The Things That Really Matter

The day before yesterday, both my children woke up from their nap at the same time, and my three-year-old son asked if he could go downstairs first, and play while I changed the baby's diaper. "Of course," I said. "Meet you down there."

Five minutes later, I carried my daughter down the stairs, and called something out to him, probably a snack or game suggestion. No answer. I went into the living room, but he wasn't there. I checked the basement. The lights were off. Not there, either. I looked in the cold cellar, and the laundry room, and the little alcove under the basement stairs. I started calling his name.
I run upstairs, back into the living room, and looked behind the couch. My daughter started shouting his name, too, in her endearing baby way. "Are you?" She called. "Are yoooouuuuuu?" I ran upstairs and checked his room, our room, the bathroom, my office. I called his name again and again.

I ran into the backyard. The gate was open and the yard was empty. I sprinted around to the front and looked up and down the sidewalk, hoping to see a beautiful little boy with unruly blond hair, wandering down the street, back home towards me. There were already tears on my cheeks. My writer's imagination was going wild. My son, my cautious little son who would never venture more than a few feet away from the house without thinking better of it and coming back home again, was gone. Gone. Just like that. It was as though he'd disappeared off the face of the earth.

I have never been more terrified.

I ran inside to get the portable phone, but before I did, I took one last look up and down the street. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice, with my life before this happened behind me, and my life after this happened a gaping and horrifying chasm I was going to have to dive into. (I told you, I have a wild imagination.) Is this really happening? I asked myself. Where is he? What do I do?

I remembered something I'd read once about the first 20 minutes a child is missing being the most crucial. I called 911. The operator asked my address, then my name, and how to spell it. I couldn't remember. I couldn't breathe. "Please," he said to me. "Please understand that these things almost always turn out fine. The faster you answer my questions, the faster we can help you find your son." Find your son. Oh my god, I think my son is missing.

I answered all his questions, continuing to run around the house as we talked, up the stairs, down the stairs, into the yard, out onto the sidewalk again, over and over until I was dripping with sweat and my daughter was bumping and giggling on my hip, thinking we were playing a game. Then I had to describe his clothes, his body type, his hair, and his eyes. It was too much like a made-for-TV movie. I sat down on the stairs and started to cry. I was describing my son to the police. Because I couldn't find him. He was with me one moment, and then he was gone.

I've been writing a lot lately about how fragile and uncertain life is, but I never really thought my life could be fragile and uncertain. I was writing about other people, not me and my family. I was safe.

How arrogant of me. What made me think nothing bad could ever happen to me? I cried while the operator assured me emergency services would be arriving momentarily. I wondered what I could have done, if anything, to prevent this from happening. I blamed myself entirely.

Just then, I heard a voice. "Mummy, why are you crying? Who are you talking to?"

He had chocolate and crumbs all over his face. "The police," I said. "Mummy called the police." I was already feeling like an idiot. My son's latest misdemeanour is to sneak cookies from the kitchen and then hide somewhere and eat them. How had I not thought of this? I glanced into the kitchen and saw the stool pushed close to the counter and the empty cookie jar sitting open at the edge of it. I'd make a terrible detective. I'd missed all the clues, and panicked instead. Clearly, high pressure situations are not my forte.

"Hello?" Said the operator.

"I found my son," I said sheepishly.

"Is he okay? Do you need medical help?"

"No. He was just hiding behind the easy chair in the living room, eating cookies. I'm so sorry to have bothered you."

The operator laughed and assured me I was not the first mother who had called him in a panicked state about a child who wasn't really missing. He cancelled the police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances. I hung up and hugged my son so hard he wriggled away.

"Why are you crying, Mummy?"

"Because I thought I lost you," I said, wiping the chocolate from his little mouth.

"Don't cry, Mummy, I'm not lost."

So what lessons did I learn here? First, that I'm awful in a crisis. I couldn't even remember my own name. I'm too embarassed to fully reveal the extent of my hyperventilating, but suffice it to say the operator could possibly now qualify as my therapist. Second, I need to keep the cookies somewhere else.

And third, everything really can change within the confines of a minute or two. Catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti and the oil spill in the Gulf are testament to this. None of us, no matter how careful we are, or how much we have, or how smart we are, or how nice we are, are immune.

This is what I learned, during ten terrifying minutes, one hot afternoon: life is full of valuable things. Some of them matter more than others. It's up to us to figure out the things that really matter, and stop worrying about the things that don't. Our existence really is too short and uncertain to waste a single second.

xo, M.

I see London, I see France ...

Recently, I was in my yard, chatting over the fence with my neighbour. She was hanging her clothes on her line, and I was trying not to stare at her bloomers. Then, she casually said to me, "So, do you ever plan to use your clothesline?" (Yes, there was slight judgement in her tone. Slight. But present.)

"Um, what? I have a clothesline?"

She pointed up. Way up. At this thing in my yard that runs across our property line, nearly at roof level.

I'd always wondered what it was, but the people who lived in our house before us were a little eccentric, so there was a chance it could have been anything. Like, maybe a tightrope. (I'd chosen to ignore it, and had planned to deal with it when Joseph got older, invested in a unicycle and told me he was joining the circus and needed to practice.)

"That's a clothesline?" I said. My neighbour explained that the previous owners used it all the time. And not as a tightrope. Alas.

(Okay, time to be honest here. I didn't really think it was a tightrope. I always kind of suspected it was a clothesline, but a) had no idea how to use it aside from climbing the roof and risking life and limb to dry my clothes in the sun and b) it was so high up that the idea of hoisting my gitch and brassieres for the entire neighbourhood to see kind of freaked me out. Instead, I chose to plaster my basement with clothes in one of my many misguided and guilt-driven attempts to reduce my carbon footprint, and then, finally, when I realized they were never going to dry without starting to smell like feet first, I'd put the clothes in the dryer and turn off all the lights as penance. I know. It's a glamorous life I lead. Being a soon-to-be-published author is not all champs and party dresses.)

"I just have no idea how I would ever use it," I said to my neighbour. "And I should probably run. I think one of the children has set something on fire." (Not really. Obviously. My children are angels. Or, at least don't have access to matches.)

Then my neighbour reached across the fence and pointed to a metal handle thingie against the wall. "You just pull that and it comes down," she said. "Easy peasy."

"Great, thanks," I said.

"I'm so happy to help out," she replied, and went back to hanging her bloomers to dry below eye level.

Now that I know I have a working clothesline in my backyard (it's big enough to fit my entire wardrobe at one time, and that's saying a lot) I cannot, in good conscience, refrain from using it. I tried the metal handle thingie, and it really is easy frigging peasy. So, I'm officially turning off my dryer. Even if the moment I raise my underpants up the pole, I'm going to have a summer camp-related post-panty raid flashback, and envision my undies (white, with Friday emblazoned on them in pink; I was that kind of kid), flapping in the breeze at the top of the flagpole. Shudder.
With all the carbon I'll save, perhaps I'll fly to London. Or France.

xo, M.