After lunch we got Gracie dressed in her bat costume and headed out (Caleb refused to dress up). Luke fell asleep in the car, and actually stayed asleep after I put him in the stroller. We visited with our family and the kids talked to their cousins, then got in line for a pony ride. It was really relaxing.
So we walked down the trail, away from the ponies and into the section where all the old cabins are. Gracie decided to play a ball-toss game. I stood about two feet away, and when she finished the kid in charge of the game said, "Ok, grab a prize!" I smiled at her and turned back to Jeremiah.
When I turned back again, she was gone.
I gave Jeremiah a puzzled look. "Where'd she go?" he asked. " I don't know, she was right here." I looked behind a big tree next to the game she played. I looked behind a family next to us. I looked around at the other games.
Gracie isn't the kind of kid to run off by herself. She has always stuck right by me, always kept me in her peripherals. One time she burst into tears when I walked a few feet away at the store and she thought I left her. It was slowly dawning on me that if she wasn't here, it was because someone took her.
I ran behind the cabins and scanned the wood line. I ran back to where the crowd of people playing games was. "Gracie!" I called. A few people glanced up, surprised at my volume. Everyone was in costume, wearing black like Gracie, blending together. "Gracie!" more looks. I ran into the bathroom. "Gracie!" Back into the crowd. "GRACIE! GRACIE" Everyone was staring at me now. "Why don't they do something?!" I wondered. My life flashed before my eyes. Not my past life. My future life, my life without my sweet baby girl, my life as the mother of a missing child, a life of police calls and news segments. A life of not knowing. Somewhere in my panic I had a moment of clarity, and a feeling of something like, "this is the moment every mother dreads, but never believes will happen- the moment your old life is over and a different, , horrible, half-dead life begins." I thought this was the last picture I would ever take of her, the last picture of her sweet little face.
She ran up by my elbow. "Right here!" I stared at her. "Where were you?" I didn't recognize my voice. It was hoarse and shaky. "I went to get a prize", she shrugged.
I guess she is the kind of kid to run off by herself.
As if in a trance I turned and started walking back to the car, which was difficult now because all my limbs felt like jello. "You wanna go home?" Jeremiah asked. I couldn't even answer. I just kept walking, Gracie's hand tightly in mine. A relaxing family day had almost turned into a nightmare.
We got into the car and I immediately dissolved into tears. I cried off and on the whole way home, and when I got home I laid down because my legs were still shaking and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I'd say it took me a good two hours to calm down. But all evening, the event kept playing through my mind like a video.
When the kid running the game told her to get a prize, I turned my back and she took off running, down the trail, all the way back to where the ponies were. Knowing Gracie, she probably sifted through the prize bucket and took her sweet time deciding what she wanted, which in the end was a bag of cheese curls. Then she had a leisurely walk back in our direction, until she heard me screaming like a maniac and decided she better hurry up. I don't know how long she was actually gone. Maybe ten minutes? Probably more like five. But they were by far the longest five minutes of my life, five minutes in a hellish world without my child.
It made me realize that, as homeschoolers, this is one area we need to emphasize more. My kids are always with me. We get together with safe communities of friends and family. Of course we've told them, "don't talk to strangers", but they are definitely not as street smart as I was at their age. Gracie saw no danger in running off by herself to grab a prize. We had a good long talk about what happened, how dangerous it was, and what we will do in the future.(Specifically, NOT RUN OFF!)
The thing that I STILL cannot get over is how fast she disappeared. One of the things convincing me she was abducted was that it seemed impossible for her to run off that fast. I had my back turned for one minute- but that was all it took. Scary. Even now I get a sick feeling, thinking about how differently it could have turned out. All those people -in costumes- making them impossible to identify. Candy and ponies everywhere, prime fodder some evil sicko could use to lure my daughter away. But it didn't happen that way, and for that I thank God. Because even though I turned my back for a minute, He never turns His. He was right there, holding her hand tighter than I ever could.
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