The scare

So last Wednesday I went to pick up the girls from school.  Let me step back a minute and say that Wednesday is early out for all the kindergartners through fourth graders so the scene is like the first day of summer break.  Whole lot of crazy kids running wild!  Jess and I wheeled up and got Alex who came skipping up rattling on a mile a minute about her day, stopped to 'Ms. Mary Mack Mack Mack' it with a friend, ran back to get her lunch and then we went on to get Gabby who resides in the next hall.  I was feeling a little anxious and already starting in on Alex about how we needed to tighten up the operation because it wasn't night to make Gabby wait, when we rounded the corner and where I would usually see my smiling Gabby she was not there.  I played it cool, I walk a little closer, looked up and down the hall/river of salmon.  No kid.  Heart starting to slow.  I found her teacher who quickly inquired with the other students still around.  "Nope we didn't see her at lunch."  Heart slowing to a near stop.   So...the teacher and I traipse down to the office and I get the principle pulled into my drama and they are just about to call her over the intercom when her sister sees her walking in the hallway outside. I have never wanted to shake/hug someone so hard in my life.  God love this child, she was helping a friend get something out of her hair, blah, blah, blah.  Needless to say, she got an ear load from her teacher and myself.

My kids know me, I hate hide and seek, we don't hide in stores, and although we live two blocks from school the question of when they can walk home by themselves hasn't come up because they know my answer.  I definitely border on being a helicopter parent I will admit, but I just love those little people so darn much that I make sure nothing is going to happen to them on my watch. So when I arrived and she wasn't there and her teacher wasn't sure where she was, her classmates hadn't seen her, and her sister was at a lose, to say I was getting a wee bit panicked would be the understatement of the century.

What was funny was the next day at work I was telling this story and every parent I mentioned it to had a similar story.  Everyone I ran into said the same thing, "Oh yeah I remember when..."  I was almost taken aback.  I almost felt like I had been through and passed the Mom initiation test.  If you can handle and live to tell about misplacing your child then you can handle anything.  What I didn't tell all of them was that I may have passed the initiation but I definitely feel scarred.  I may have somewhat kept my cool exterior in tact while looking around with her teacher trying to find her.  But when I finally set eyes on her I marched her out of the campus so fast because those tears were coming and there was no way to stop them.  I had know I was going to rip that campus apart trying to find what was mine and the let down of finally seeing her was too much. 

So you can keep your hide and seek games.  Just letting them out of my sight to go to school is proving to be all my little heart can take.