The scariest thing happened – a child went missing. No, this isn’t a joke. It ends well, but it was terrifying. No, not my child, but it could have been.
I get a call from a friend. There’s a child on the corner, maybe 2 years old. not saying anything, just hanging out by the school, but not behind the fence on school property. I leave to take Xavier to preschool and walk by there. The location is half a block south of me, and a block north of where Xavier goes to preschool, it is right on my path.
I get there and other people are there now. The school has taken notice and the playground supervisor takes the child in. We know each other, and she knows exactly what I was thinking, that I would take that child in, call the police, and care for it until somebody else came along. She would normally be fine with that, but since school was still in session she decided to take him in to the school’s office and call the police.
And I would have taken this child in, too. I would have cared for it and called the police and been as calm and soothing as I could be.
After dropping Xavier off at preschool I started back for the school where this child was. What if this child was abandoned? Would it need foster care? Would I be able to take it home with me if that were the case? Was this child simply lost? Did it get up from nap and head out the front There are far too many stories of parents laying down for a nap while their child naps only to wake up with the door open and the child gone out for a stroll.
I could imagine if this were the case how the parents must be feeling – scared, ashamed, guilty, and simply terrified their child is missing. What role should I play in this current scenario? How would I feel if this were one of my children?
As I approached the school I saw two men running up the block searching frantically. I asked them if they were looking for somebody. They described the child, and I informed them this child was in the school’s office. They flagged down the police car that was approaching and let the officer behind the wheel know. It was just coming over the radio the child was at the school. Another officer was walking with the mother towards the school.
Turns out it was a little child whose family lives a block north of me. This child literally slipped through the cracks of the fence and wandered off. The mother was walking southbound with three other small children towards the school as I walked northward toward my own home. I offered up my own small sympathy, lame as it may be, but I wanted to let her know that there were people out there who understood these things happen even to the best of us.
I got home, put Tevye down for nap, sat down, and cried for half an hour.