Scared

I have already kicked the cat off the computer chair. Had my hot chocolate and checked everything I "need" to check in computer land. Yet I am still sitting here. I haven't felt much of a desire to blog lately. But I feel it now. So, even though my dad will be here this afternoon and there is some major cleaning to do. And even though I didn't have bread this morning so I had to stop at the store and get some on the way home from school. And I still need to make sandwiches and deliver lunches to my 3 cuties (by 10:30.) And even though I need to shower, and make my bed, and run my errands, and clean the kitchen, and, and , and... Here I sit. I hope this post isn't really lame. That would mean I am wasting time. But I want to get this memory down. Before the emotions fade and it's just another thing that happened once.

Once a week we car pool with a friend of ours who lives behind us. Usually it's on Friday. She works at the school as an aid. I pick up the kids since she doesn't have to be there until 10:30am. The she brings them home. She's already there. It's a win-win situation. We save each other a trip and a good 45 min.

This week my dad will be here on Friday so I didn't want to car pool then but I hoped that we could move it to Wednesday because I had a midwife appointment in Knoxville and then I wanted to do a little shopping. I would get an extra 45 min. Perfect.

It was all arranged.

Tuesday morning the kids got ready for school. Aspen packed her piano books and we got all of the library books ready. That afternoon I went and had lunch with Cedar. I saw Christine there and we reconfirmed plans. Everything would be great.

When I pick up on piano lesson days (Tuesday) I don't try to be there early. Lessons are at 3:30 and it only takes us 10 min to get there. So I usually leave my house at 2:55-3:00pm. I get to the school by 3:05-3:10pm. I have until 3:15 before they have to go sit in the gym and I have to sign them out.

Today was no different. I picked Olive and Cedar up and drove over to the intermediate building (there are 2 buildings.) to get Aspen. I was annoyed. It was 3:12 and no one was outside calling students when their parents came. (These schools have it down to a science. If you don't have the "card," you have to go in show id and sign them out.) I still had time. I wasn't late. I drove around front where the intermediate kids go if their parents are late. I saw a bunch of bus riders, but no Aspen.

Back to the back of the school. Still no one. I got out. The doors are locked and no one is waiting where the kids should be. Now I'm getting really annoyed. It's still not 3:15.

Back to the front. Still no Aspen. I see one of her friends. I ask if she's seen Aspen. No. Great. Park, unload the other 2 kids, grab my wallet and go inside.

The building is empty of adults. There are basketball players and cheer leaders waiting for practice to start, but no adults to be seen. I look in the office. The principals office. The teachers lounge. I had passed her teacher walking over to the other building on my last trip around the building. Annoyance is starting to turn to fear. Where on earth would she be??? They aren't allowed to keep kids after school here. And besides, the last time Aspen got even as much as a warning was MAYBE in 1st grade. Finally, there is an adult that works there. She seems in a great hurry but stops when I say I can't find my child. She does an all call through the school. No one there. She suggests I ask the 2 teachers who are out with the 100 or so bus riders getting ready to load the bus.

OK. Nope. They haven't seen her. They have been pretty busy with the students they are in charge of. It wasn't a surprise.

My last hope is that for whatever reason she walked over to the other building??? Why she would do that I don't know. And if she did. Christine would surely send her back. Tomorrow is car pool day. Fear is bubbling pretty close to the surface now. I don't think it helps that all emotions are intensified with pregnancy, but regardless. I couldn't find my child and no one was around to help or explain her absence.

We load back into the car and head back around to the other school. There she is with Christine. Once she sees me she breaks into some sort of stick your tongue out nanny nanny dance that drives me over the top. What in the world did she think she was playing at? Did she not know that I was about 1 1/2 min. from calling the police to look for her? And here she is enjoying a good joke? NOT FUNNY!

(Remember, I just lost it.) I pull up, roll down the window. Dangerously speak for her to NEVER do that again. The joke is wiped clean off her face. She knows it's not a joke. Now she feels all of the fear I did. I've never talked to her like that before. She gets it. I know she's sorry. I am beginning to understand it was a mistake. Christine sees that i didn't "forget" her or tell her the wrong day. I ask her through stuffed nose and willing myself not to cry that if Aspen ever makes that mistake again, to please send her back to the other school to wait for me. I am really in no condition to comfort Aspen crying in the back. To understand why Christine would be in on this joke. To do anything other than leave and cool off. But Christine needs to explain. And later, I take it in. She was busy with a serious situation in her class. She had just learned that Aspen walked over. That Aspen thought that we were carpooling today. She had been calling me. (I left the phone at home.) She was comforting Aspen trying to lighten her mood (I think she realized there was a mistake) by saying I was silly and had forgotten or made a mistake.

It was a learning situation for everyone. I know that no one was trying to make a joke. No one had failed to do anything they should have. (There was a faculty meeting at the other building which is why no one was in the intermediate building.) Christine would have told her to go back if she had seen her, (which she usually does.) The stars had lined up just right for it to all go wrong, and it was no one's fault.

But still, it took me all afternoon to shake that feeling. That empty gut feeling that a big chunk of me is missing. Like someone could have taken my child. And then how would I live if there was that vital a part of me missing? I've seen things like that on TV. But when I watch them, I am warm and comfortable in my living room and I have just tucked my children in to bed. It doesn't happen to me. It couldn't happen to me.

But it could.