Twas Brillig

Yesterday, I had finished shopping at Wal-Mart with the kiddos, and I was naturally tired and frazzled. Four kids at Wal-Mart will do that to you, let me tell ya. Somehow we’d survived the meltdowns (”Mommy! PLEASE can I have a hotwheel? PLEASE! You never buy me ANYTHING!” and “Mommy! A princess blanket! I always wanted a princess blanket! Can I have the princess blanket?!” and the ever-favorite, “Mommy, Scooby just jumped out of the cart and he knocked all the fruit snacks off the shelf.”) and now I was just loading up my kiddos and my loot into the van.

Now, the Mighty Oprah says that we should load our kids and buckle them in before we start on the loot. That way they don’t run off and nobody nabs them while your back is turned or whatever. It’s a great idea, but for someone like me with so many to load up, my back will always be turned to someone. Fortunately, Princess Fluffy (age 6) and Bubba (5 next week!) can get out of the cart and buckle themselves into the car without needing my help now. So I generally grab Scooby (2 3/4), because he’s the one who can cause the most trouble when my back is turned, and he’s the first to get buckled in.

So, my back was turned to Fuzzles (20 months old). He was still in the cart, with all our groceries and junk, while I buckled Scooby in. Scooby resisted and what should have been a two-second ordeal was more like 2-minutes.

2 minutes is a long time to have your back to your autistic baby in the shopping cart.

I turned back around to get Fuzzles…. and he was gone. The cart, the groceries, my purse, and my baby were GONE.

I looked around frantically. There was no sign of him. Anywhere. He was gone.

Now I’m in full panic mode. WHERE’S MY BABY??!!!! I’m racing through the parking lot— yes, leaving my other children unattended— and I’m yelling his name (which is silly— he’s autistic. He doesn’t respond to his name. But it didn’t have to be logical. I was panicking, remember?) and I’m starting to think I’m going crazy. How could he be there and then not be there?

After what seemed like an eternity, a horn suddenly honked at me, breaking through my panicky thought process. A woman in a car shouts to me, “is this yours?” She’s pointing to the far end of the parking lot, where Fuzzles is still happily strapped in to the shopping cart.

“Yes! Thank you!!!” I yell back, and race towards him. Apparently the parking lot is just slightly sloped and somehow the cart had begun to roll and had just kept rolling. But he was safe.  And quite pleased with his adventure, too!  I threw my arms around my tiny dude and pushed the cart back to the van.

It all happened really quickly, but it was a very big experience for me. I think sometimes we need these things to happen to us—to give us a taste of how scary it would be if something happened to one of them. It reminds us how precious they are. That we should cherish them and let them know what they mean to us.

Let’s just say that everyone got extra big hugs last night…