Maybe Don't Ask Her to Watch Your Kids

Ooh, I forgot to tell y'all this the other day. One afternoon the doorbell rang, and it was Rebel Yelling Mom's little girl J. She is in kindergarten, and she had two older girls with her. I didn't recognize them, but one was maybe ten, and the other was seven-ish. J asked if Laura could play, and I said that she was finishing her homework, but would be outside in a few minutes. They went away.

A little while later, Laura got up from the table and said, "J and some girls are in our backyard, can I go out there with them?" I said sure. I wasn't surprised that they had made their way around back--we have a couple of hammocks, a sandbox, a zipline, and some woods back there--it's nothing fancy, but it's one of the few yards that isn't a steep hill, and kids seem to wind up in it. I figured J's mom had told her she could go play in the cul-de-sac, and this was close enough. Laura went out back and Hank followed her, so I went and sat on the back porch to keep an eye on him. I asked J, "Who are your friends?" And she said, "They're my friends," and then she mumbled their names. So the five of them played while I sat there drinking coffee and looking at the trees.

I heard the doorbell ring, and when I got to the door, nobody was there, but I saw Danica's--Rebel Yelling Mom's--car in the driveway. I went back out to the porch, and there was Danica yelling at J, "I have been looking all over for you? You didn't tell me you were leaving!" So she was understandably annoyed. She looked at me. "Where is Tyler?" she asked. I said, "Who?" And she turned to her daughter, "WHERE IS TYLER?" J and the other girls said, "I don't know." Oh my lord, then she REALLY started screaming, "THEN WE'VE LOST HIM AND HE CAN'T BE ALONE, AND HE COULD BE DOWN THERE ON THE ROAD HIT BY A CAR!" Danica gestured at the two girls I didn't know, and she said, "Tyler's their brother, he's 8, and he has Down Syndrome." To the bigger girl, she said, "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO STAY WITH HIM." So then I started to have that panic feeling--you know the one--that you feel when your child is lost. Danica was yelling at the girls to GET YOUR BUTTS IN THE CAR, WE HAVE TO GO LOOK FOR HIM.

They head off back around the house to the driveway, and my kids are standing there in total shock, I think from the yelling. I said, "Come on, let's get our shoes and go help them look." So both kids and I started walking towards Danica's house. I thought we would just look all around their yard and the yards in between--I didn't know. We got out into the street, and here comes a big SUV, driven by a woman I recognized as Danica's friend. Then I remembered, Danica is very close with another mom who has a Downs child (like Danica does), and they are always visiting each other. It dawned on me that this mom--I've met her but I can't remember her name--had left her three kids at Danica's for her to babysit. Oh dear, I thought. So we get to Danica's driveway a minute after this mom rolls up, and she's apparently been told what's happened, and she is shrieking at her ten year-old daughter. I had thought that Danica was yelling, but this woman was holding nothing back. I have never heard another parent lose control like that. Right then Danica came out of her front door leading a little boy by the hand. She said, "He was upstairs hiding under the bed." So, relief all around. Other mom kept yelling. Danica saw me and started yelling, "I'm sorry I was freaking out!" And I said, "I understand! I should have asked the girls if you knew where they were." Then we kept calling out apologies to each other while the kids and I backed away from the place.

The lasting fallout from that scene was that Hank was TOTALLY rattled by it. After we got back home, he sidled up to me and said, "Wh-wh-why was that mama mad?" I explained that she couldn't find her kids, and that when mamas and daddies can't find their kids they get very scared and upset, etc. He thought she was mad at him. Because as far as he knew, everyone had been having a wonderful time in the backyard, and then this mama appeared and started yelling. So I reassured him that he hadn't done anything wrong and he wasn't in trouble. We repeated this conversation for about half an hour, but he could just not compute that kind of emotional intensity coming from a mama.

I know both of those moms were feeling desperately afraid--even writing this, I can feel a little of that panic--but the one time I couldn't find Hank (he thought it would be a fun game to hide in the backyard, back in the underbrush, and not answer when I called him), I sure didn't waste time yelling at Laura, and it's not like it was her responsibility to watch him, even if I had said, "Keep an eye on Hank for a second." I felt like that mom should have been a little angry at her friend, Danica, who lost track of four kids at the same time, one of them a special needs child. I hate to sound this judgmental, because we all have bad parenting moments--see above where I lost Hank in our own yard--but the whole event was so very scary, and the stakes couldn't be higher. I don't have any tidy narrative closure for you, but I like to keep you up-to-date on any drama in the 'hood. And I know that anyone who has kids knows that terrible feeling.