A Chunk of my Heart.

"I don't want to alarm you." The voice on the phone said. It was my neighbor, Tom. "But H, is outside on the playset."

"What?!?" I said and then noticing that sure enough my little boy was not in the house.

I wasn't being negligent, I wasn't off in my own world. H even had two little playmates over and while I chatted with their mom, I assumed that the three were playing happily.

He came in, got dry, clean clothes on and I told him how dangerous going outside alone can be. And then we went about our playdate and then lunch at school with M.

It didn't quite hit me until I laid H down at naptime several hours later how scary that was.

Had I noticed that H was gone, my mind would have gone to far away and bad places. I would have unknowingly wasted time searching the house and then every possible scenario would have gone through my mind.

He could have run out into the road. A car could have been coming...

There could have been a stranger going by...

He could have wandered a few houses away to a marshy backyard...

Instead he was dirty from the playset, wet from the dew on the grass and shoe-less.

My heart has seemed to calm down since then. I realize I will do what I can not to let that happen again. I knew he knew how to unlock and open the screen door as he did it last week while I watched. I just didn't think he'd ever go out on his own or maybe that I'd hear him.

As I sat on H's bed after books and a song and prayer this afternoon, I realized this icky, yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach and how I couldn't possibly even grasp the loss of this little boy. I was mad that he went out the door, but more than that I was scared, I was sad that it had happened in the first place and I was mad at myself for letting such a thing happen.

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous.
It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
-Elizabeth Stone

There is much truth to that old quote, because today I know that a chunk of my heart was walking outside (even if it was just the backyard playset) without me.

H. July 2008