BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

 

The fine blogger from the “Aloha State,” Mark Kaufman, recently blogged about losing a toddler http://markkoopmans.blogspot.com/2013/08/on-good-day.html.  It reminded me of when I lost my own three year old, Spencer, without ever leaving my house.

Many of us have experienced the sudden terror of a missing child.  Turn your head for a minute on the playground or on the beach and bang…missing child.  Part of your brain knows the toddler will turn up playing somewhere quite innocently, another part imagines all kinds of horrible scenarios.   Mark refers to it as DEFCON-3 panic.

But how do you lose a child inside your home?  How can a toddler simply disappear inside the house?  Spencer managed to do just that when he was only three. 

He was in our dining room while his mom and I were preparing to walk into town to do some shopping.  I went upstairs to get some money, his mom grabbed his stroller from the mud room, and he was gone.

Our house had a front door and a back door.  Both were still locked.  Spencer had to be inside.  I called…no answer.  His mom called…no answer.  I yelled…no answer.  His mom yelled…no answer.  WTH!

I ran upstairs and checked every room and every closet.  I checked under every bed, all the while calling his name.  His mom checked the basement and every room downstairs, all the while calling his name.

He was nowhere to be found.  Spencer had to be in the house, but he was nowhere.  He did not answer any of our calls.  What the hell do you do?  Call the police?  His mom decided to panic. I was contemplating the same.  How do you lose a three year old within your house all in less than sixty seconds? 

As I started to join Spencer’s mother in panic, I noticed the door from the dining room to our foyer was not completely open against the foyer wall as it usually was.  It was stopped from its usual position by a pair of tiny shoes.  I quick pulled back the door and behind it, attached to the tiny pair of shoes was our three year old, Spencer.

“What were you doing behind there?  Didn’t you hear us calling?”

“When you go uptairs I behind the door.  When you yell I tot it funny.  When you yell real loud, I scared.  Afraid you mad me.”

Perhaps there was too much yelling in that house, so much that it scared a little boy.  The yelling scared him so much because he associated it with anger, not fear.  Our yelling in panic made him continue to hide.

I know how he felt.  There was a lot of yelling in that house.  It was usually out of anger.  It was usually over something as silly as forgetting something or not putting a dish away.  It was an unrealistic, unpredictable, out-of-control, over-the-top anger that came from a disease which his mother inherited from her mother.  It was anger that no three year old could understand. 

Spencer knew that when that anger was around, it was better to stay hidden.

We laughed when we found Spencer.  We laughed from the silliness of the situation, we laughed out of relief, but the condition which caused him to fear our panic because he interpreted the yelling as irrational anger was not a laughing matter.

Spencer is a teenager now, living with his mother four hours away.  I am sure the instances of irrational anger have not abated.  Hopefully he now understands it is from a sickness that is not his fault and he need not fear it. 

He probably still does his best to avoid it, even when it happens behind closed doors.