January 28, 2010

So the other day my nephew went missing.

As the mother of three small, evasive children, I know all about the Fears. Fear number one, kidnapping. Fear number two, illness. Fear number three, having one of them eaten by a large carnivorous animal. There isn’t a mother alive who hasn’t experienced all three of these by the time her child is five.

One of my sisters, who we’ll call “Penny,” has four children. Her youngest son is a darling little, busy, 6-year-old boy.

The other day, Penny was teaching piano lessons after school. Her children usually sit quietly on the couch during lesson hours, mastering the finer art of childhood obedience. (Translation: as long as they don’t bother her and get their schoolwork done, no one gets hurt.)

After the end of one of her lessons, she noticed that her youngest son was missing. Like any good conscientious mother, she and her husband did a quick sweep of the house to track him down. No dice. They searched again, yelling at the top of their lungs and looking under chairs and behind the coats. Their efforts were fruitless, the boy was gone.
They called the police. They prayed. They repeated the cycle. The clock was ticking and he was nowhere to be found.

There is a point where a mother finally succumbs to her own personal panic button. Once that spark is lit, watch out world because until that child is found, there’s no stopping the terror.

First she figured he had surely fallen out of an upstairs window. She ran outside and raced to the back of her house, certain she would find his tiny, broken body in a crumpled heap on the ground. No body.

Next, she decided he must have crawled into the bed of the neighbor’s pickup truck, dozed off, and bounced out the back on the freeway. She was certain he was lying in the middle of the highway somewhere, sound asleep, awaiting death at the hands of the next unsuspecting vehicle.

But wait — what about the cougar? Just a few months ago a neighbor reported a cougar sighting. Yes, that must be it. The cougar got him. Her poor baby never even had a chance.

“He’s gone!” she cried to her friend into the phone after searching the house relentlessly for an hour.

“Just keep looking, he’s got to be there somewhere…”

Finally, after she had given up hope that he would ever be found, she made one last trip into the pantry. And there, in the shadows, she discovered him, hiding behind the pantry shelf eating forbidden crackers. By that point he had heard the entire ruckus and was too terrified of his mother’s fragile and slightly frightening state to show his mug.

Like any good mother, she squelched her instinct to paddle his rear, squeezed him tight, kissed his face, and sent him to bed so she could have a good cry.

There is no doubt, being a mother is hard, terrifying work.

See more at Annie's blog at regardingannie.com