I Thought I Lost You

Dear Laney,

On Wednesday afternoon, I drove into town, dropped Hagen off with your dad, and picked you up from school - determined to have a fun Girls' Day.

For our activity, you chose the Children's Museum, the one located right next to the playground you love - the one with the big tube slide. After painting in the back room of the museum for a few minutes, you set your paint brush down and announced, "Mom, I going to play on the big slide, but I be right back," then took off for the museum exit. The art assistant said, "Wow - she's independent, isn't she?" and I replied, "Yeah, and she doesn't bluff, so you need to hand me that painting so I can skedaddle, 'cause, mister...she's gone." I caught up with you just before you left the premises, and forced you to hold my hand as we walked across the parking lot to the big playground.

Here's the thing about the Dragon Hollow playground: it was built to look like a medieval/Scandinavian fortress. The inside of the thing is one big maze, and is typically teeming with running, screaming young'uns.

You have no trouble winding your own way to the top of the thing and jumping into the big slide. I tried sliding with you the first few times we went, but shoving my big body into that little tube is like trying to force a golf ball into a drinking straw. I kept imagining a search and rescue crew having to dismantle the slide in order to liberate me. So we developed an understanding, you and me: I would watch you start the climb to the big slide, then I would run around the side and meet you at the bottom.

Wednesday afternoon, you violated our agreement. I don't know if you beat me to the bottom of the slide and then ran off, or if you started climbing to the slide and decided to change direction. All I know is that every young'un BUT mine was coming out of that tube and I was starting to have heart palpitations.

I called your name louder and louder, and you never answered my call. I started circling the fortress, and told myself that if I started running around the playground like my hair's on fire while screaming MY BABY'S MISSING! MY BABY'S MISSING!!... well, that's a bell you just can't unring.

My patience paid off when I found you in a whole other section of the playground, talking with another girl about the relative "bouncy-bouncy" properties of the swinging bridge. I experienced a 70/30 emotional cocktail of overwhelming relief and murderous anger. Not for the first time, I wanted to grab your shoulders and scream into your face, "You are not seventeen! You are TWO!! TWO!!!!"I know that this same independent spirit will someday lead you to conquer the world, but in the meantime, it's shaving years off your mama's life.

Dear friend and reader Clay Mercer says he sometimes reads this blog and is reminded of the attitude and adventures of his youngest daughter. He wrote me:

As I told a friend one time about Hannah, I wouldn't take a million dollars for her, but I wouldn't give fifty cents for another one just like her.  Sometimes the blog reminds me of that.  Thanks.  

That might be the most accurate thing I ever read.

Love,

Mom