On Tuesday afternoon, the scariest moment of my life transpired. Miles, 7, has an after school band class that he participates in; he plays the drums. Theoretically, he's supposed to walk from his regular class to another classroom at the back of the school campus. Usually, Tres and I take him to school on Tuesday mornings and we remind him to go straight to his class after school. On this particular Tuesday, his dad, Ted, took him to school and forgot to remind him.
So, at about 2:20 (the time Miles' class lets out), I get a phone call from Ted asking me where Miles gets picked up after band. I tell him where and expect Ted to be finding him promptly. A few minutes later, I get another phone call from Ted telling me that he looked for Miles and can't find him anywhere. I tell him to look in the school office. Ted calls me back 5 mins later and says, the scariest thing I had ever heard in my life, "Miles isn't in the office and I just spoke to his band teacher and he never made it to class. You better get down here." Now, at this point Miles wasn't just missing for a 15 minute time period; if he wasn't in his band class, he had been missing for almost 2 hours! Now, for those of you who have children, particularly young ones, you understand how monumental and terrifying this information really is. Your 7-year-old child is missing. Nobody knows where he is. He isn't anywhere at the school, he either: a) walked off the school grounds to, God only knows where, or b) somebody took him. That's it. Those are the two options. He walked off or somebody took him. HE WALKED OFF, OR SOMEBODY TOOK HIM!
At the moment that Ted spoke those words to me, I felt my heart give out. I immediately began to panic on the inside. Tres was standing beside me and when I told him, he tried to hug me, but I couldn't be touched. I remember putting my hand over my mouth because I felt that if I didn't I would explode. I started sobbing and I felt myself go weak in the knees. I remember standing in my closet looking for something to put on and having to hold onto the shelf for fear of passing out. It was, by far, the worst feeling I had ever felt in my 37 years. The child who I love more than my own life, the son who I would lay down my own life for, without a moment's hesitation, the boy who lights up my day and who God has loaned me to be his mother and protector, is unaccounted for; he's missing. It is tied in the top three of a parent's worst nightmare. (I won't go into the other two, they're too horrific)
So, Tres and I get dressed, very hastily, and get into the car heading to the elementary school. On our way there, I get a phone call from a nurse at a local urgent care. She asks me if I am the mother of Miles Hane. I say that I am. She tells me that Miles is there and that one of their patients had found him wandering in the parking lot and had taken him inside. The constriction which had settled into chest, from the moment I found out he was missing, now moves up into my throat and I start sobbing again. (Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty much crying the whole time-just at different levels) I call Ted and we head to the urgent care. When Tres and I walk in, there must have been a look of complete panic and terror on my face, because the nurse, without saying a word, points me to direction of the door leading to the back. I walk through the door and remember a nurse holding Miles' bag before I actually see him. I turned the corner and there he was. He was standing, holding a cup of water in one hand and a bag of sour gummy bears in the other. He looked tired and slightly dirty. My knees finally gave out when I was standing in front of him. I grabbed him and held him so tight and kissed him over and over again. Needless to say, Miles got a whole lot of kisses and hugs and love that day. And for a few days thereafter.
Now, I could go into the negative effects of this experience on the next week of my life, but I won't delve too deeply into it. I will write that I had a hard time sleeping that night and that I was very emotional for the next week. I will write that every single thing that the school could do wrong that day, they did. I will also write that the distance that Miles walked on that fateful day was 1.6 miles, in traffic, across major intersections. I will also write that the reason Miles left the school and decided to walk home, (because he forgot about his drum class) is that he felt that he had no other recourse. But, for now, that is all I will say about that.
As for Miles, the only thing I can say is that the odds were against him that he would have arrived safely to wherever he was headed. He was completely turned around and walked the opposite way of our (or his dad's) house. He crossed 3 major intersections that are heavily trafficked (and a few other streets). The only answer that I have that makes any sense is that God took care of him. Plain and simple. God took his hand and helped him across the streets. God took him down a path and kept him away from cars, bad people and anything else that may have harmed him. Miles was hungry and tired and his feet hurt, but otherwise completely fine and unharmed. Just for that, I am eternally grateful in a deep way that I am, unfortunately, unable to express.
In a quest to look internally to find answers to queries that my heart longs to know, I am reminded that I must not forget to look up. That I must not bury myself in my own head and forget that the help I always need seems to find its way to me. I must not take that for granted. For God works in all ways; sometimes mysterious and enigmatic, and sometimes obvious and completely undeniable.
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