Ray was conducting his nightly putting kids to bed ritual upstairs. I was conducting my new
I told him to calm down, that she was probably around somewhere upstairs and that she wasn't going to come out if he was upset with her. He looked some more and started getting panicked, but I just thought she was somewhere in the house. He started getting upset with me as I wasn't getting the gravity of the situation. Finally, he made it quite clear to me, that he had looked everywhere and couldn't find her and he was starting to freak out. Which, I might add, is NOT something Ray does easily. Allow me to illustrate. When Ray and I first started going out, he demonstrated, somewhat proudly, his astounding apathy at a softball game when someone got hit square in the eye socket with the ball, knocking him out cold (probably lost his eye, brain damage, who knows), by eating a donut while everyone rushed in to help. Exhibit #2: When I was stuck in the snow storm for six hours with his children (Marcelo was only a few months old) with no cell phone contact and finally made it home at midnight, I found him sleeping on the couch, yeah, didn't even wake up with the sound of the garage door opening. Anyway, my point being, it appears that Ray only has strong feelings for canines and, well just dogs really.
So, I decided I should take his annoying disturbances a little more seriously. Perhaps Sofia really had walked out the front door, although that's not something I would expect her to do. And believe me, I expect her to do many things. Much of my time is spent planning how I will stifle these acts when they occur. Ray kept calling out for Sofia frantically, and I mean frantically like I've never even seen before or thought was possible. I started helping him look for her, methodically going from one room to another, looking under beds, in closets, bath tubs, everything. I even eerily looked out her bedroom window on the second floor, God forbid, she had fallen out. That does happen to children. I looked in the basement, in the dark cold storage. I couldn't really imagine her being kidnapped from the house, that seemed absurd, but I guess, that does also happen to children. I looked on the main floor, went in the less frequented living room and dining room, looked under the table, next to the couch, nothing. Ray would pass me with a look of --what the hell is wrong with you; why aren't you calling out for her hysterically like I am.
We thought we covered most of the house, Ray had ran outside a couple of times already. He kept declaring that he was going to call the police. I told him to hold off and sent him to ask the next door neighbors if by chance she had wandered over there to play with their kids, a more feasible scenario, I thought if she really wasn't in the house. Plus, if anything, I thought that would give him something to do before calling the police while I looked for her in a more organized fashion. The neighbors said they hadn't seen her and they jetted out, one in each direction, running down the sidewalk to help look for her as if she really had been kidnapped right out of our house. Ray was beside himself as he walked in the front door and made one last hysterically plea for Sofia to come out, yet the tone of his voice indicating that it was too late and she was gone.
Finally, Sofia slowly creeps out from behind a small settee in the living room, crying and frightened. And although, Ray's condition would have been enough to frighten anyone, when I had my "debriefing" with her about the incident, it appeared that what had really alarmed her and finally got her to come out from her hiding place, was the sight of our next door neighbor running down the street.Although, I might have thought that Sofia would have "known better" to continue hiding once she could hear Ray calling her desperately, for some reason, she just didn't get that he was worried. She explained to me that she thought it would be fun to hide from Daddy and have him look for her and find her. I asked her if she was trying to hide from Daddy so he would get worried and she said "no", that she thought Daddy would find her easy. Normally, I would interrogate further to confirm the truthfulness of her statements, but seeing her crying and scared, I chose to believe her. At this point it didn't matter anyway, I think or at least hope that she learned her lesson.
After I was done calming her down and lecturing her on why we don't hide from Mommy and Daddy, she told me she wanted to go cheer up Daddy who was still suffering from post traumatic stress in the other room. She gave him a very affectionate hug and patted him in the back much as I had done with her. This is not a common thing to see, at least not out of her own volition, and it was so very touching. When we both put her down to bed, she asked why I was still happy, looking in contrast at Daddy's still post freaked out expression. I told her I was just happy that we found her in the house safe and sound and that nothing had happened to her.
Although this experience may have taken at least a year off of Ray's life, it was nothing compared to things we got into as kids. And I'm glad it wasn't, seeing how vigilantly we watch over our kids these days compared to what I perceive as the less concerned times of our parents. When I was four or five, I walked several busy city blocks by myself to meet my brothers to play at a family friend's house. They had deceptively told me they were going to these people's house when in fact they were in our apartment building's next door neighbor's house. I asked my mom permission to go play with my brothers and she said yes of course. My parents came to get me a couple of hours later after they received a call that I had shown up there by myself. Everyone was shocked at how I had managed to walk there without getting lost, run over, or kidnapped. Ray's stories are a little more colorful like the time when he was four or five and he broke his arm sliding down a banister. When met by his Dad, he calmly declared, "It's not broken Daddy, it's just bent". Later, he started kindergarten and used his cast to smuggle not one, but two plastic knives into class which he used to accost his teacher as he made a run for it.
I hope our kids' lives are a little less eventful in this regard.
Oh that is so scary! I'm glad she is okay!
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