Panic

I thought I knew the meaning of panic. Who doesn't? Panic is what you do when you wake up late for one of your finals in college, or when you realize that you accidentally pressed "send" on that bitchy email, or when you realize that your box of wine has but one precious drop left in it and you got a whole lotta sitting on the couch and watching TV yet to do. That's panic, right, people?

Nu-uh. That ain't nothin'.

Panic is when your one-year-old daughter vanishes from your house. Yeah. I'm not kidding. It's when you're standing at the stove, idly shoving ground beef into uncooperative pasta shells and humming the Pajanimals theme when you cock your head to one side, listening to the unusual silence in your house. You know your son is downstairs with his dad in the basement, but you don't hear the usual pitter-patter of your daughter's feet as she trots through the house causing her own personal brand of ruckus. So you go through the house, calling for her and feeling more panicked with each empty room you look in. Then you realize that your son left the door from the house out to the garage propped open, and the garage door is open as well.

Well, that's when a special type of feeling like you're about to crap your pants sets in. So you run outside yelling her name when you hear a panicked shriek that sounds awfully familiar. Then you have that moment of "Call the sheriff! Nora done fell in that there rock quarry!". Never mind that there is no quarry within 600 miles of your house and come to think of it, you're not really sure what a rock quarry is. No, the shriek is due to the fact that your neighbor has scooped your daughter up in her arms so she can deposit her back in your house.

So you run up to your neighbor, who says "Well, I was looking out my window and saw Nora meandering by, and when I didn't see anyone with her, I kinda figured that wasn't how that was supposed to go." She describes how she went outside and picked her up to bring her home and Nora did her usual wig-out that she does when someone she's only seen 200 times in her life picks her up. But, as your neighbor dryly observed "At least she's got the right defense mechanism going."

So you thank your neighbor six billion times while trying to get your heart to slow down, and your neighbor, who has three kids of her own and a very "been there, done that, not a big freaking deal" attitude, consoles you by talking about how her kid once escaped from her house and went into the neighbor's garage and fell asleep in their car.

Then you go home and try not to think about how differently things could have turned out. If she had turned left out of the driveway and not right, and gone towards the cross-street instead of deeper into the cul-de-sac where everyone recognizes her. If your neighbor hadn't happened to see her. If she had cut through someone's back yard into a different street and had swaggered into the bar up the road for a scotch on the rocks. And then you think about what a freaking idiot you must be. How can it take so much brain power to stuff meat into shells? Do you really not notice your daughter strolling right past you into the laundry room and then out the door??

So now not only do I know the true meaning of "panic", I also am pretty familiar with the bona fide definition of "relief". Oh, and "being-so-mad-at-myself-I-want-to-stab-myself-in-the-temple." I got that one down now too.

My little vagabond:

Yeah, I gots to go, people. I gots to roam. Y'all can't tie ME down.