I Know That Fear Now

This morning I woke up a little before six o'clock to go for a morning walk. As I was rolling out of bed, I heard Alyssa in the bathroom down the hall. I was surprised, because Alyssa is our child who likes to sleep in, and she is rarely out of bed before seven-thirty. I stood quietly for a moment, thinking she would go back to bed and go to sleep, but instead, she came wandering into our room, and when she saw me getting dressed, I whispered for her to go get dressed, too. You should have seen the excitement that glowed in her eyes before she turned to run back down the hallway to her room. She was dressed and ready within forty seconds, and we headed to the garage to get her bike.

I thought that it would give me a better workout trying to keep up with Alyssa on her bike, but it was a little stop and go. She stopped to walk her bike back up a driveway so she could ride down its incline, she stopped a couple of times to go from the sidewalk to the road and then from the road to the sidewalk, and she even stopped to examine a puff ball on the ground, which I think turned out to be the tip a cat's tail that had been lopped off. Through all of this, I kept walking, and she would catch up to me in less than a minute.

We walked up Sandifur Parkway, going through Viking Homes, and when we were headed up a street to the new church, I told her she could ride on ahead to circle the parking lot while I met up with her and walked around the church building. But when I made it to the church just a minute later, I didn't see her. I thought she must have been on the other side of the building, so I kept walking around, but as I followed the sidewalk around the entire building, I never saw her.

Once having made it completely around the building, I doubled back to check for her, and when I still didn't see her, I figured that she might have not seen me and headed home. This didn't worry me too much, because even though I didn't like having her be alone, and I was uneasy that I didn't know exactly where she was, I knew that she knew her way home and would hopefully make it there safely.

I went ahead and followed our tracks back home, thinking that maybe she would be waiting for me somewhere, or that maybe she had fallen and needed my help, but still, I didn't see her. "She's just gone home," I kept telling myself. "I'll just hurry home, and she'll be there."

But when I walked in the garage door, there was no purple bike in its parking spot, and when I called for her, Alyssa didn't answer. I made a quick sweep of the house on my way to our bedroom and woke up Brian saying, "Alyssa's gone." He shot out of bed and threw his clothes on while I quickly told him the story, crying uncontrollably. When he headed to the garage, probably to get in the car to look for her, I called 911. I briefly considered not calling the police, because it would be silly to bother them if she was happily riding her bike just a couple of blocks away, but I knew that if someone had seen her on the side of the road and had taken her, that I needed help as soon as I could get it. And I worried that if someone had taken her, how would we ever get her back?

I'm surprised the man on the phone understood me at all, with my raspy voice being made worse by my tears, but he was able to get our information and told me that someone would be coming to help right away. The second I hung up I quickly dialed my parent's number, and that's when I saw Alyssa ride up the driveway. I hung up the phone mid-ring and called 911 again to let them know she was safe.

Then I ran down the stairs into the garage, and pulled Alyssa into my arms. We sat down on a chair in the garage and just cried together for a few minutes. That's when my parents called back, and Brian answered the phone to let them know I would call them soon to explain everything. At that point he didn't even fully understand what had happened, but he was just glad that everything was all right.

Oh, I'm so glad we didn't lose Alyssa today. I'm so glad she came home to us safely. Apparently she had parked her bike by one of the chapel doors and was drawing pictures in the sand with a stick. I'm assuming that's why we didn't see each other, and I am so relieved that we just missed seeing each other for a moment, instead of losing her for good.