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.