Posted on 06/24/2005 9:11:00 PM PDT by TheWriterTX
My children and a neighbor's son were energetically playing on my front lawn. With the garage door raised, I sat, phone, cigarettes, and drinks nearby, watching them tromp on my grass and race up and down the sidewalk. The weather was customarily warm, the air sanguine, the quiet of the street punctured by occasional loud barks of laughter from my son, daughter, and their friend.
The little ones asked if they could call on my next door neighbor's children. With a nod and a wave, I watched them go to the door. It had been quiet at Bonnie's house all day, so I was not surprised when my neighbor's son announced that no one was home. My daughter, ever delighted by the beautiful perennials in Bonnie's garden and potted plants on her porch, plopped down to admire the flowers. My son and his friend dashed back to their bikes and started "racing" again.
My neighbor, Terry, drove by, and I gave him a leisurely wave. Anthony fell off his bike, so I hurried over to check on him. With the resiliency of youth, his pained yelp was almost immediately replaced by a desire to "go faster," and we righted his bike so he could continue his adventures.
I returned to the garage and grabbed a quick slip of soda. I took a moment to light my cigarette and put the lighter back in a safe place. I stepped from the garage because my "radar" had gone off. It was nearing a minute since I had actually held my daughter in my sight, and a part of me was instinctively anxious. I looked towards Bonnie's front porch, no more than five long paces from the corner of my garage….
And she was gone.
My strong voice bellowed her name down the gentle tranquility of the street. I firmly expected her to appear from behind a potted plant or perhaps the corner of the house. I expected to hear her pretty little voice call "Mommy" in reply.
It didn't happen.
Now I was shouting her name at full volume, my tone insistent. Tossing the cigarette down, I rushed across the lawn to Bonnie's house, then to the side of house, then past the next house.
She didn't answer. She wasn't there.
I asked my son and his friend if they had seen her, had she gone into the house while I had my back turned. Blankie? I reasoned. A toy, perhaps? Demanding that the boys follow me, we searched the house, calling to her. I opened doors, closets, checked under beds, seemingly silly places.
No baby girl.
Back outside, for another mad dash up the street, this time passed several houses in both directions as an unfamiliar ache crept up my guts, clogged my lungs, and filled my throat. I called on God, I uttered profanities, I repeatedly screamed her name with a desperation that resonated in my ears. Had a car gone by? I thought crazily. How could someone have stopped and grabbed her from the front porch without my noticing? It couldn't be, I reasoned. She had to be here…somewhere!
But she wasn't.
This is not possible, my mind raged. This cannot be possible. This is not happening….
But it was.
I charged for the phone and called the police. Perhaps five minutes had elapsed since I first realized she was missing, but every minute was another minute something terrible could be happening to her. I devolved into a creature that embodied everything I despised: horrified and helpless, I begged the police to come and continued screaming her name on the sidewalk, as if by some miracle my voice alone would compel her to magically appear before me.
I fluctuated from despondent and hysterical, pacing like a wounded lioness, to methodical and composed as I answered the rapid fire and determined questions of the dispatcher.
The boys ran around and shouted to her, looked through the house again while I stayed on the sidewalk. As the seconds ticked by, my need to be with her grew immeasurably, my guilt incalculably, and my heartache exponentially. Another neighbor, Kathy, came home, glanced over, and went inside. Little did I know Kathy also ran for her phone and began calling neighbors, sending up the alarm that my daughter was missing.
No more than a minute later, the police arrived. An officer and a separate car with a tracking dog screeched to a halt in front of me. Into the house we went, checking every toy cluttered room, past undone laundry and lunch dishes, vainly looking for her. I fumbled through the photo album to find a recent picture, my throat now harsh from crying. The police were preparing my daughter's information for an "Amber Alert."
My neighbor, Terry, who I had waved to earlier, received Kathy's call. He dropped everything and ran out of his house. Meanwhile, next door, my neighbor Bonnie, her children, and my daughter came from the back of their house to the kitchen for some juice. Bonnie's son noticed the police car lights flashing and they all made haste to the door.
Terry sighted my daughter, scooped her up, and brought her into my kitchen and arms. I dissolved into waves of sobs, clinging to her as if to make us one. She seemed to sense my need, because she curled into me and hugged me back, letting me kiss her and rock her to ease my own hurt, not hers.
In my mind, I had discounted the possibility of her going into Bonnie's house because I presumed Bonnie wasn't home. But that was exactly how it happened. They heard the doorbell ring, came from the back of the house, and when they opened it, my baby girl was sitting on the front porch. Being accustomed to playing at Bonnie's house, she breezed right in. All the time I was tearing myself apart in anguish, she was watching a movie in the back of the house and happily playing with Bonnie's children.
I now have a shock of gray hair to show for this experience. But if this is the only price I had to pay for it, I consider myself extremely grateful and wholly blessed. And my "radar," I discovered, now goes off almost instantly. ***
© 2003 Linda Prussen-Razzano
COPYRIGHT © 2003 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN.
We can Monday-morning quarterback on the sad loss of three innocent children in Camden, about what the family should have done or where they should have looked. The entire event described above, from introduction to my daughter's safe return, took less than 10 minutes. I dissolved into a senseless mess in just three.
I'm so glad your daughter was safe. Thankfully my children grew up in a 'safer' time and I grew up in an even safer era than that. Things just keep getting worse!
Um...I'm sorry, and I know how stressful losing a child can be.
But calling the cops after five minutes without checking next door to see if the child was there, is HYSTERICAL, and not at all rational.
If people lived their lives like this woman does, the cops would be at their door every time the kid went for a whiz in the bathroom without telling Mom she was going potty.
I'm thinking some kind of GPS-like transmitter sewn into children's clothing as a standard safety device might be a good idea. Mom can just turn on her reciever and see instantly how far away the child is.
We're dealing with this in MN.
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S8961.html?cat=1
Ignore all of the (media) SUV references. Non-factor.
And yes, you are absolutely correct. Minutes do seem like hours...
She had decided it would be funny to hide in my neighbor's open garage and not answer our yelling.
She's a barrel of laughs.
Did ye call the cops?
When my daughter turned 3, there were no less than four (4) kidnappings of young girls in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I lived in the southern mid-cities at the time.
They eventually found the skeletal remains of one of them just about 3 miles from my home a couple of years later. As one might expect, I lived in abject fear of one of my kids becoming a statistic.
Thankfully, and perhaps because my wife and I were diligent in teaching her to be extremely wary of strangers, she's 31 now. However, she has two kids of her own, so that little niggling fear has not subsided.
When you become a parent, you're a parent for life.
Moral of the story: When people read too many milk cartons, and trust too much of the media-generated fears that the media need to sell more milk and other goods, such people turn into irrational fearful hand-wringers looking for the government to save them.
Their plan is working on you.
Congratulations. Your emotions have overridden your reason, and people like you will undoubtedly sell out their (and my) liberty for some perceived safety.
Flame away.
PS:
Your angst-wridden tale is CHAT, not "news"!
If you don't know the difference, lurk for a while.
PPS:
Forgive me for initially thinking you wrote this moronic pap.
You merely posted it.
Thanks.
Years ago my 2 year old daughter drowned in our apartment pool. I rounded a corner and saw her floating silently on a pool so still it looked like glass. I dove in, got her out, and miraculously was able to revive her. She's had no after effects. From the time I spotted her until I revived her the seconds seemed like days. Life really did seem to shift to extremely slow motion.
You did right to panic. Good job.
Flame you?
I want to buy you a drink! :-)
BTW..this piece of crap was written in 2003.
News?
The child is in university by now! ;-)
Thanks.
I needed that.
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