Missing.

I was driving down my street, slowing to turn into my driveway when I saw a pink streak zoom across the road in front of me.

When Sunshine realized I was turning in, she scooted her bike out of the way and waved.

“Sorry.” She said through my car window while pulling off her bike helmet.

“Sorry for what?” I replied.

“For parking in your way.” She didn’t understand where my sharpness had come from.

“Oh, I see. I thought maybe you were apologizing for racing across the road on your bike without checking for cars.”

She put on her “Busted” face.

“We’ve talked about this. This is your last warning. The next time I see you do something dangerous like that, I will take your bike away. I would rather you not have a bike than me not have you.”

“Okay.” She said, sounding a bit defeated. I felt bad for yelling at her as soon as I got home.

“Are you coming in?” I asked.

“No, I’m going to ride my bike a little more.”

“Okay – you just make sure you’re CAREFUL. It only takes a second to look for cars. You’re not too busy for that!”

I went in the house and started on dinner. The Man was downstairs playing games with Ninja Boy.

Twenty minutes later, the spaghetti was nearly done and I called my boys up and asked NB to call for his sister.

“She’s not out there.” He said a few minutes later.

This was not the first time she’s been late coming home. It was not the first time we called for her and she had gone out of hearing range (usually inside a friends’ house). I walked down our sidewalk and called both directions for her, then went in to eat.

“Well, her dinner will just be cold, then.” I said, trying to cover my anxiety.

We all ate. Then started to clean up dinner. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I shut of the water and threw on a sweatshirt. “I’m going to walk to the end of the block.” I called as I ran out the door.

I walked up the block, then back down to the other end. I peered around the houses to check the back yards. I looked for her bike hiding by bushes. I called her name.

Stopping back at home, The Man informed me that her bike was there the whole time. She had switched to her scooter. So we both walked, again, up and down the block searching for a sign of her.

I walked down to the park that, even though it is out of her “play area” in the neighborhood, is not too far for her to get to. No luck there. I walked back through the field where some kids take their bikes to “jump.” That was when the feeling flooded my body. I had fought it off, disguised it as anger, pretended it wasn’t there. But there it was, full on and fierce: fear.

I have an absurd knack for envisioning the worst situation possible. Not just thinking, “Oh, I hope THIS didn’t happen.” No. Perhaps it is due to all the graphic images my mind has taken in over the years, but I SEE the worst happening. My ‘visions’ come more when I’m driving, but they are never as bad as when I’m looking for my child in a vacant field.

What if someone snatched her? Just pulled up and grabbed her? What could she do??

What if they didn’t TAKE her, but just harmed her and left her somewhere? How would we ever find her?

I tried to shut it off. “That didn’t happen. She’s fine. She. Is. Fine.” I muttered to myself repeatedly.

I went back home and told The Man I couldn’t find her. He got in the car to patrol the neighborhood. He could see my lips quivering and told me to wait at the house in case she called.

I looked at Ninja Boy with desperation in my eyes and asked him if he would be willing to go door to door to check for her. He obliged.

I walked calmly in the house, into the bathroom. I closed the door, then fell to my knees sobbing.

“Please, God. PLEASE. Bring my girl home okay.” I cried over and over.

My crying was interrupted by Ninja Boy, who burst through the garage door yelling, “HERE SHE COMES!!!!”

I thanked The Lord, wiped my face and ran outside.

Sunshine met me with a smile. “Oh, no!” I cried, “Where WERE you!?”

“At…my…friend’s house.” She said meekly.

“What friend?”

“Um. My friend right down there.”

“So…you went to someone’s house that YOU don’t even know their name…and you thought that would be okay!?? You didn’t think we would be worried!?”

She didn’t know what to say. She knew she had done wrong.

“I’m not even going to yell at you because Daddy is very mad and I know he will.”

She sat, sullen, at the kitchen table. I put her plate in front of her and kissed her on the head. “I was very scared, doll. VERY scared. I didn’t know where you were and I was scared and upset. I love you so much.”

She got her Daddy Lecture, choked down her cold spaghetti and went straight to bed.

When I tucked her in later, she told me she was sorry she had scared me and “I’ll never do that again!”

“That’s good, baby, because I don’t think I could handle worrying about you like that again.”

But I know – I have eleven more years before she’ll venture off on her own. Eleven years – mostly teenage – during which she is going to forget to call or be she’ll be late getting home. During which she will get a driver’s license and go on dates. Trips with friends, sleepovers, lock-ins, parties and The Yet to Be Determined. And then she’s going to leave me to be a grown up and I’ll have a whole new mess of reasons to worry about her.

I think I had better trade up for a stronger heart.

The Proverbial Glass

How do you look at life? Are you a ‘glass is still half full” kind of person? A “glass is half empty” person? Or are you a “Who the hell drank my water again?” kind of person?

I’ve always considered myself a realist. I don’t look for ways to improve things. I try not to dwell on the bad. I look at What Is and deal with it appropriately.

Or, at least, I used to.

I’ve really been having a tough time lately. I don’t know if I’m MORE depressed now than I have been in the past…or if it just feels less justified now. It has been a year and nine months. I should be getting back to *normal* by now. Not that I’m always sad – I have plenty of good days. But sometimes, it just doesn’t take much to send me into my dark mood. For example, someone who used to read my blog, I’m not sure if she still does, lost her baby. I didn’t know it for a month. When I found out, I cried. And then when I got home, I cried some more. I have to ask myself “Why?” Why do I feel so involved in the sorrow of someone whom I’ve never met? I think a lot of it has to do with knowing how much it hurts. Knowing how she must feel. And the feelings all come flooding back. I can’t work. I can’t interact with my family. I think that I crossed a line somewhere between empathy and just plain unhealthiness. It’s completely normal to feel sorrow for someone – but not to stop your life because the pain seems like it’s too much to bear. It’s not even my pain, but a reminder of it.

I dwell on it. I let it consume me. I let it dictate my life. I let it define me. I let hover over me and take away my happiness. I get wrapped up in the sadness and let it envelope me and smother me. And I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be unhappy anymore.

I have to get the sadness out of my life. I have to stop inviting it into my home. Now, I don’t mean that I’m going to ignore when my friends (or acquaintances, co-workers, family) are in pain. I don’t mean that at all. That’s the NORMAL kind of sorrow that we really all need to be able to deal with.

But it’s time for some changes.

I already stopped watching horror movies a long time ago. I have seen so much REAL death in my life – I don’t ever want to see it again – Especially gratuitous death and gore.

But then, every night I watch the news and it makes me cry. Every night someone’s teenager is shot in the city or a baby is found in the river or a teacher is accused of sexual abuse. There’s a war in which people’s children are dying every day. EVERY DAMN DAY. I just can’t take it anymore. So news – as much as I love to yell at your weather people – you’re done for a while. No nightly news at all.

There are the indulgent websites. You know the ones. The addictive, scandalous kind. Where you hear about hundreds – if not thousands – of women hate their husbands. Or husbands who hate their wives. Or the worst – moms who hate their kids. I got involved for a while – but no more. No more entertaining myself with other people’s problems and shortcomings. These sites are fun for some, but they just have too much hate and sadness for my life right now.

Then there are the Internet Throw Downs. What actually spurred these changes (I’m slow) was an argument that ensued at Suburban Turmoil a while back. Lindsay said something to the effect of “I don’t think being a SAHM mom is as hard as being a WOHM mom.” That angered some SAHM’s who don’t think their job is very easy and they said some things. Things which I felt I needed to clarify for them – like the misconception that it’s fun for me to drive two hours a day to spend ten hours with people I really dislike doing a pretty thankless job. But in my “edjumakating” them – I ended up making it very personal and it got into a war of “Who’s life is harder?” Probably three days into it, someone made a comment to the effect of “Is this a contest or something?” And I opened my eyes. I’ve never thought that SAHM’s had it “easy” – I would sure like to be one – but only because I think I would enjoy that job much more than this one. (It does not, however, PAY as well as this one – monetarily, of course.) And there I was, trying to PROVE to these STRANGERS that my life is SOOOO hard. And I felt STUPID, because really, it isn’t. I may not LOVE my job and I may REALLY hate driving here – but that doesn’t mean my life sucks. I spend so much of my free time dwelling on what’s wrong that I don’t get to enjoy the good things.

I think about my mom at my age. When she was 25, she had three kids: 11, 9 and 8. She had to leave us home alone so she could work all day. She sometimes got food stamps to feed us. She was battling alcoholism. We rented all the time - she moved us from place to place – maybe because of money, maybe because of her own demons. A couple times, she bought houses only to have them foreclosed on when she could no longer afford them.

Her life must have been HARD. The Man and I make most of our bills on time. Sometimes things are tight. Sometimes we have a little extra cash to blow. The kids are healthy and we have stable jobs. Jobs, which I might add, that let us get away with a lot. I may not consider this job an ‘escape’ – as I often would like to escape from here – but it’s a pretty cushy job. And they leave me an awful lot of room for slack.

The Man is very guilty of missing the silver lining. He spends most of his time dreaming about what we don’t have and moaning about what we do. We had a long conversation last week and I brought it up to him. “What good is the future if you can’t be happy in the present?” And since that conversation, he’s been (just a little) less reluctant to get out of bed in the morning. He’s been trying hard to be happy with the time we get and stopped complaining (mostly) about the time we don’t get.

I realize this post is getting lengthy and losing focus, so let me reiterate: It’s time to get happy. It’s time to work when work needs to be done and play when the opportunity arises. It’s time to love going home instead of hating to come to work. It’s time to live it up on the weekends and work hard during the week. It’s time to get over the martyr syndrome and accept a little help. It’s time to stop inviting the sadness into my life and start spreading happiness to others. It’s time to stop bitching about everyone else drinking my water and just go fill the cup up myself.

It’s going to take practice, not inviting this stuff into my world, but I think I can do it. And I think it will do both my family and me a lot of good.

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like To Sell?

The other night I had a disturbing dream. I'm not normally a dreamer - or don't remember them, anyway.

I was at work, talking to my mom on the phone, trying to whisper to her that I thought I might be pregnant. The next thing I remember was an ultrasound being scheduled and then immediately performed in my cubicle. The ultrasound (because they are so accurate at, what, two weeks?) said something (in text even) about it being a boy. I feigned happiness in my dream, but mentioned to someone that they could never be sure at that far along.

Then in walks my boss, asking me "How long is this going to take?" "When will you be back at work?" "What's your plan, here?"

I was scared, confused...I just found out, I DON'T KNOW!!

I don't remember where it went from here, because really, it just got weird. But that feeling at the end of Office Scene 1 struck me through my whole body. I woke still feeling it. It was a crushing, confusing, debilitating, unknowing feeling. A feeling like I had to make a choice between two impossible solutions. Two very different paths that would each have a profound impact on my life. But I didn't know what to choose. I just sat there, with that feeling, wondering what to do.