Cat’s Cradle

The backdoor didn’t swing open that Wednesday afternoon. I sat watching that piece of hinged wood for an hour before I called the school.

Did he earn a detention? Could you double check, please? The parents of his friends and acquaintances hadn’t seen him that afternoon, quizzing their sons in muffled telephone voices, before saying sorry, no, but we’ll call, I promise.

I drove the streets, hit all the parks, before calling the police. The panic steadily filling my throat broke loose in fierce waves when the officer shook my hand ten minutes later.

Living in a small town has its benefits, especially when your circle of close friends include the men who own the banks, fund the college basketball team and sit on the city council. Police come fast when you’re important to the people who are important.

The man I worked for hired a detective the next day to find my boy, a mobbed up guy who rousted the underbelly of Champaign/Urbana for six straight days. I have no idea how much that cost.  Kenny was old school, I was one of his and that man always took care of his own without a second thought.

It didn’t matter though, that intensive public and private search, nobody found my boy. My velvet skinned, fourteen year old child was lost to me.

Sound hurts your skin when your child’s gone missing. Heightened senses cause every whisper to grate, the slightest aroma becomes nauseating, appetite is a remnant of some past life and the simple act of breathing becomes an ache of hard work. Sleep cannot happen, missing an hour on watch would be an unforgivable sin. You feel like the animal you truly are when your child turns up gone, reduced to little more than compulsive pacing or unnatural stillness and nothing, not a single blessed thing, exists except for his face and your need to hold it between your hands.

The good call came almost three weeks later. The father of my son’s best friend pressured his boy hard until he broke, my boy was alive and apparently stoned out of his mind a few short miles from home. This good man promised that his son would be muzzled until I captured my child.

My bare edged teenager had been living with some college drop outs in a squalid apartment near campus, these immature dipshits intended to follow Phish across the country as soon as they could scrape up enough cash to fix their van. A VW van. Modern day hippies had seduced my bruised child with dreams of asinine stupidity and hits of decent blotter.

Turns out my boy had been casing our house, hiding in the senile neighbor’s privet, waiting for it to empty so he could grab a knapsack of belongings before heading off on his big adventure. My despair had turned into commando parenting mode by the time I hung up the phone. My husband and I left for work the next morning, parked a block over then walked back home. We watched my boy begin his stroll across the back lawn with a young stranger who obviously hadn’t seen a mother’s touch in a very long time, the king headed out the front door to grab the car packed with suitcases and tickets as I greeted my stunned progeny in the kitchen. I exiled his friend to the back porch and proceeded to guilt my child into temporary submission until we could coax him into the car and onto a plane ride headed home to Texas and out of harm’s way. It wasn’t hard. My son, despite his problems, loved and trusted me.

I lied to my child on that two hour flight home and I plied him with more lies when we piled into the car for the long drive north seven days later. I watched his heart break and a bitter distrust take hold when we pulled into the military school situated three hours south of Champaign. I lied to save my son and it about killed my soul to do it. It took him four long years to forgive my deception. I still think his life and current success was worth that hard price.

I experienced a brief loss, barely tasting the edge of real devastation or the crush of guilt fueled insanity that parents faced with the harsh reality of a truly lost child must embrace. Dante obviously wasn’t a father because he didn’t know jack shit about the true rings of Hell.

Say a prayer for your children and another one for yourself, then hope to God your true blessings never go missing.