My Least Favorite Parental Moment

This morning was downright terrifying. No other word for it.

At 8:20 this morning Eli started to stir and fuss in his crib. I climbed the stairs to the third floor where the boyz rooms are. I was met with Eli, teary eyed and yet at the sight of me his face glows when he sees I have heard his beckoning call and have come to release him from infant jail. So I lift him onto my hip, as I do every morning. I turn in the hallway, looking back into the rooms before I head down the stairs. Seth is sound asleep, splayed across the bed in his gawky fashion. Gabriel is cradling his Curious George monkey in the crook of his arm, wrapping his body around his stuffed animal, curled in a fetal position that is his norm. I look at Nathans little bed and am met with only a patterned sheet and his favorite fleece blanket bunched in a corner.

I say his name, and am not met with an answer. I put a confused Eli back in his crib, and he lets out scream after scream in response. But I am barreling through the house calling out Nathan's name over and over again. I check my bedroom on the second floor, where I had just come from, to see if somehow he had wandered in. Nothing. The bathroom is clear. And I descend to the first floor, confused as he would have had to go down a flight of stairs and right by my bedroom door. We have monitors in every room upstairs? How did I not hear him?

The first floor shows no signs of him. The refrigerator and pantry doors are closed. He's not in the playroom, or watching TV in the living room. I give the downstairs bathroom and mudroom a once over. No luck. I stand on the back porch yelling his name. I dial my husbands cell at work, trying to speak clearly with my heart pounding so fast I hear it thudding in my ears. He does his best to understand but needs me to repeat things several times. With his voice in my ear I run down to the basement and find nothing. I go over each room again, this time checking under furniture pieces and into closets.

The older boyz have awoke and are running around yelling for him too. They look in every nook I look. Reopen closets and check behind doors. We cannot find him. The dread is becoming an overwhelming chunk rapidly gaining more and more weight in my core. Heavy pain. John tells me it is time to call the police.

I dial 911. I speak clearly. I woke up, and my three year old is missing from my house. The words seem surreal. Like a horrible made for TV movie. Except there is no reason and it is totally illogical. They ask me for my address. I spout off information, location, cross streets, name, and things like the last time I saw him. Still running around the house trying to find my precious little boy. I look and look and look. The voice on the phone asks me what he was wearing. I say nothing. He says you can't remember what he was wearing? I say no, I remember- it was nothing. As in naked. Naked? He asks. Yes, it's hot on the third floor. He didn't want to wear anything to bed. He had taken it all off for bed. He was naked. He keeps asking over and over. I keep reiterating he is wearing nothing. He keeps asking questions about it, I want to scream "my kid wanted to sleep without clothes. He doesn't like them. He's three and it is 90 degrees on the third floor of this house. If he wants to sleep naked so be it. Can we move on?" In the end he does move on on his own accord and connects me to my local police department.

The voice on the line changes. I am checking the living room for the tenth time. The big boyz run down the stairs and say that they can hear him. He said "here" when they were yelling on the third floor. I fly up the stairs again. The police dispatcher starts calling the officers. I yell for him again in his room. And out he comes. From under his brothers bed. I tell the dispatcher and they cancel the call.

I hold him tightly in that desperate mom grip. Smelling his hair. Arms tightly around him. I pull him back and place my hands firmly on either side of his face. I am on my knees and about his height. I ask why he didn't answer Mommy. Mommy was sooooo scared. To which he replied that the dinosaurs were running down the street. They were going up the road to the church. And if he talked they would be able to smell him. So he had climbed under his brothers bed and tucked himself in between the bed and the mattress stored underneath. He didn't want the dinosaurs to find him.

We sit down in the living room. I call Daddy D back and tell him it is okay. He talks to me, calming me after I begin to hyperventilate when the adrenaline subsides and the reality sets in. I am violently sick to my stomach. There are pains through my heart. The back doorbell rings and it is two officers. One of them is the husband of my sons second grade teacher. He knows I am not some crackhead who had fallen asleep stoned and lost their kid. They talk to me for a few minutes, assured that this is just a horrible morning. They help to calm me further. I close the door and think to myself, maybe the educational trip to the Museum of Natural History on Wednesday was NOT the best idea.