Parenting.
Zoe is going to the fitness center with a friend three evenings a week. I thought I told her to contact me by 8:30 for her ride home. Her friend can’t drive after 9 p.m. and we meet halfway between home and the fitness center, so D doesn’t risk being out past curfew. So at 8:35 I sent her a text message and I started calling her at 8:39. Twelve unanswered phone calls later, I’m in my car racing to her friend’s house. Oh, I forgot that before that, I called the fitness center and the girl at the desk said, “No, she hasn’t signed in, and I haven’t seen her.”
I got to her friend’s house and they tried to call D’s cell. No answer. I’m shaking and ready to barf in their bushes. Then her step-father comes down, phone in hand, “They are at the center, in the sauna.”
Zoe neglected to tell me that D’s mom works at the center. And the girls had taken a late class, then went into the sauna, never checking the time or thinking to give me a buzz to let me know they were going to be late.
Inconsiderate. Frightening. God, no words are available to describe how absolutely terrified I was, how certain I was that something horrible had happened. These words seem trite, incapable of truly expressing the horror I experienced for 30 minutes. And then I think of other mothers who didn’t find out that their daughter was safe, she’s where she said she’d be, she just didn’t think to send a text message, and my heart goes from my throat to my bowels and I’m certain I’m going to throw up, over and over.
Zoe couldn’t understand why I was so upset, until she learned that I was told she had not been seen at the center. And then it was like a light bulb snapped on and she saw, for one moment, just how justified I was to be so upset. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And in my mind, I’m so grateful that I only had to be upset for a little bit, that I didn’t have to wrap my head around a reality so terrifying and paralyzing that I can’t even begin to articulate.
My heart is still pounding, tachycardic. My skin feels hypersensitive and my stomach is clenched. She’s in bed now, but I’m certain that sleep will be thin and elusive for me tonight.
Sierra didn’t understand how I felt about these kinds of things until there was this one night I didn’t respond to her calls and texts. I was in the middle of a heated argument with R, and things were (needless to say) sort of distracting me and I wasn’t paying attention to my phone. I had told her I would be home at 10 or 11, and it was past midnight, I wasn’t answering my phone, and neither was R. She didn’t know I was even with R, so that doubled her anxiety. At any rate, she finally got a hold of me and told me how absolutely terrified she was that I had been hurt or something, and I turned to her and said, “NOW you understand what it feels like when YOU don’t answer the phone, or when YOU come in late.” She laughed nervously… but you know what? She is pretty good about checking in now.