Panic

Normally, I try really hard to see life with a sense of humor. I spent waaaaay too many years taking everything too seriously, and frankly, I hope I never, ever see that uptight, humorless, un-fun version of myself again. Trust me, it's UG to the LY. That said, today I got scared out of my mind and I have to blog about it, and that unfunny too serious part of me? It might have averted a disaster. So, this isn't going to be a humorous post. I just don't have it in me. Here goes:

Today, high on my 10 pound weight loss, I decided to skip the gym this morning and get some errands done without feeling like I was having to rush through everything. Plus, T had asked if he could go with S to the childcare room at the Y today. I was cool with that, but it meant I wouldn't be working out before 4 pm or so since childcare wasn't offered in the middle of the day. I was okay with that too.

S and I dropped T off at school and headed to Wal Mart after taking a side trip to scope out where I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow (long, long overdue). S loves to push the basket, but she's not tall enough yet to see over the top when she pushes so I walk in front of her to help steer the basket and to sacrifice the backs of my heels so that innocent Wal Mart shoppers aren't doing double duty as crash test dummies for my toddler. And also so that she doesn't go around running into displays because she apparently finds that hilarious.

My mission was to get S a new pillow, new bath rugs for the downstairs bathroom, and some other organizational stuff for the house. It's easy for me to get distracted in Wal Mart. After being in Germany for four years with limited product availability, I could spend hours just walking around and looking. After about 15 minutes, S was more interested in looking at stuff than pushing the cart, so I took over. As we were walking by the craft/sewing aisle, I remembered we needed tape and new scissors. I was looking for those items when I realized S wasn't beside me. I found her very close by, looking at the St. Patrick's Day stuff. I brought her over to where I was standing and reminded her that she needed to stay right beside me, then I went back to trying to decide which scissors and tape to buy. It wasn't like it took me hours to do this, it might have been three minutes, tops. But suddenly I realized that S wasn't near me.

Thinking she went back to the St. Patrick's Day display, I walked over there. Not there. Well, maybe by cards. Not there. Okay, she couldn't have gotten far. So I start walking around in a widening square looking for her. She is nowhere. I'm calling for her....dead silence in return. I grab my pocketbook out of the cart and start jogging up and down aisles - still no S. At this point, I'm only an octave below yelling for her and people are starting to stare. I have no doubt that I looked as panicked as I felt. Where could she be? At what point do I alert the store without seeming hysterical and over reactive? I remember getting lost in the grocery store when I was a little kid and how much it scared me. Wal Mart is five times that size, and the world is a lot less safe these days.

By now, I've covered a great amount of ground and I'm absolutely terrified. I can NOT find her, she isn't answering me if she can hear me and if someone did grab her, they probably could have gotten out of the store by now. So I grab the cart that I abandoned in the middle of the floor (no idea why I thought that was important) and I run to the nearest register. I tell the clerk that I can't find my daughter and I am really fighting not to burst into tears. Great. That's really going to help things. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, this lady springs into action. Within seconds, and it's all a blur so the details are sketchy, there are two are three people over with me asking for a description of S and activating a "Code Adam" which in effect shuts down the store. One of the clerks remembers seeing S with me, and goes off to look for her, while I'm giving a description out of my daughter and what she's wearing. These ladies that handled this situation were amazing. They stayed calm and kept me talking so I stayed fairly calm. Intellectually, I recognized that becoming hysterical was going to help no one, but I was feeling pretty darn hysterical, and I was fighting the urge to lose it. Within five minutes, they found her. When I saw the clerk come around the corner with her, all that mattered was that she was okay - not where she had been or had she been in danger (although in retrospect, I'd really like to know these things). The Code Adam was cancelled but not once did anyone that helped us make me feel like I had over reacted or jumped the gun in alerting the store that she was lost.

So what did S do when she saw me? "Hi Mommy!" Oh geez. Oh GEEZ! If I was ever going to have a stress induced heart attack, it would have been today, that's for sure. But truly, all is well that ends well, and I'm grateful that I knew S's height and weight and could describe in detail what she was wearing. And I am so grateful beyond my ability to put it into words for the help and compassion the Wal Mart employees showed me. I learned a very, very valuable lesson today. It only takes a second. Just one quick, horrifying second for life to completely change. I'm lucky. I'm so much more than lucky that I'm not sure there's a description for it, but I'm whatever that description is that everything turned out okay.