Indescribable

Yesterday, my son was missing was 15 minutes. For Mr. T. who had called to ask me if I had him, it had been a little longer. For my mother-in-law who had been at home waiting for Son to arrive, it was even longer. For my 7-year-old who had gotten off at the wrong bus stop, it was probably an eternity.

I had a doctor's appointment and afterward went home to wait for a meeting I had to go to at Daughter's school. As I drove down the street headed to our street, Mr. T's ring sounded in my pocket.

"You got Son?"

"What? No. Why would I have him?" I looked at the clock. It was 4 and he should have been at my ML's about 3:20.

"My mother said he didn't get off the school bus."

"What? I'm near the house, maybe he forgot he was going to her house and he's there."

I turned down our street as I said this, hoping to see him standing outside our door.

"My mother just left our house. She drove over here when he didn't show."

All I could do was listen to him as I pushed all desires to panic aside.

"Did you try your sister's house? Maybe he went there."

As I pulled up to her house, which is around the corner from us, I saw Mr. T driving up behind me. I rang her bell.

"B. Have you seen Son?"

"No, I was over at mommy's house waiting with her. He didn't get off the bus."

Mr. T sat in his car. I could see him thinking.

"OK. Where would he be," I asked out loud. I called his school hoping someone was still there. "He's not the wandering kind. At least not outside of our presence." The phone kept ringing at the school.

"No answer," I said to no one in particular. Then I remembered the little girl who lives across the street from MIL and takes the same bus as Son. She's a 6th-grader now, always protective of Son when he's on the bus and she would have made sure he was with her.

"Did you talk to S," I asked Mr. T. He perked up at the idea.

"No, I'll go see if she's home."

"OK, and I'll go to the school."

He drove off and before I could get to the end of the block he called.

"My mother has him. The police brought him home."

"The police? How did they get him?"

"He got off at the wrong stop and there was a woman who saw him and called the police."

Oh thank God, I thought, hanging up the phone and heading toward my MIL's house.

I've read this crap enough times. Kids smaller than mine have been let off at the wrong stop. It's always a miracle a person gets their child back safely. I mean, when they don't go where they are supposed to, then how in the world do you begin to look for a needle in a haystack? We don't know every stop that bus makes so there was no way to trace the route ourselves. We would have had to call the police but thankfully someone else beat us to it.

I got to the house and saw the police car still out front. Running in the back door, there he was eating a cookie, his signature silly grin nowhere on his tearstreaked face. He looked composed but clearly wasn't just a short while before then.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"He was brave," the officer told me. "Knew his address and was able to tell me where to go."

There had been confusion about why he got off where he did and as we explained to the officer that Son was getting off this stop all this month, I clutched my son and stroked his face, my hands constantly reassuring me that he was really there. I'm looking down at him and thinking how big he feels to me now yet his face betrays his age and while he's tall, he's always been slight. His jacket may be bulky but clearly he's still a baby. So how did this bus driver let him get off at the wrong stop?

"You know, I want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt but Son has been getting off here all month. The school knows about it and they are supposed to tell the bus drivers too. It makes no sense. Was he a new driver, Son?"

"No."

Everyone just shook their heads.

"I am going to make a report and give it to the school and the bus company."

"Good," I replied. "I will be fussing them out tomorrow."

All this went down in the space of one hour. I had Son take us back to the house of the woman who called about him so I could thank her in person as well as see the street where he got off so I could figure out how this mixup happened. I saw the street. It still makes no sense.

"We could have been childless," Mr. T said later that night.

"Not childless. We still have Daughter. But there's no need to think that way now."

But how do you not? If we had needed them, we have his latest pictures and we have his fingerprints. We would have called the cops the moment Mr. T found out that S had not seen him either. Actually she hadn't been on the bus that day and that was part of the issue for Son. If she's not there, the bus driver doesn't stop at the street he needs to get off on so he thought he'd get off down the street instead. But he misjudged and found himself someplace he didn't recognize. A dead end street. Two other kids got off there too - they were all the last kids off the bus, he said. When Son realized he was lost, he started to cry and the kids took him to the house of woman they knew who used to babysit them. She had been calling our house while we were out looking. When we didn't answer, she asked her husband what they should do and that is when they looked out and saw a cop outside dealing with another situation. That cop called another whose job is dealing with children and that is the officer who brought him home.

As I thought about that I realized that there was no point in imagining the worse because it was clear that when Son got off at the wrong stop, he got off in the hands of God who steered him not only to a woman with a 7-year-old of her own but he sent a cop down her dead end street as well. It was under control all along. That may have been why panic never got a chance to settle in.

Son knows home numbers but he hasn't memorized our cell phone numbers yet. He will now. Mr. T and I went to bed thinking that things could have been very different. I have chosen to not dwell on it nor to imagine how lost my son may have felt because that stuff only breaks your heart. He's safe. That's what matters and the bus driver's company has lots of explaining to do to me. Today I'm just thanking God for helping me to remember that He sees in low places and in high; He is the ultimate protector of children even though things don't always turn out as we pray they will. We can't explain all the evil that happens to children and we'd just pull our hair out trying to understand the seeming inequity of it all. I can't go there. I can only focus on the 2 He's given me and thank Him that I still have 2 to continue caring for.