I have had way too much excitement for one person to take.  On the other hand I know that three fireman, two EMT’s and four police officers can stand in my living room.  It’s crowded, but it can be done.  I also know that a fire truck, an ambulance, and two squad cars will fill the parking lot from the drive to my building. 

    A is a cutter.  When he gets too frustrated he cuts scratches into his arm.  He says the only way that he can get rid of his pain inside is to cause pain outside.  Last night was the culmination of four days of showers, washing bedding, one frustration after another, lack of sleep and food and short fuses. 

    In the midst of an argument about what was setting him off he grabbed the biggest knife in the kitchen and I could see that it was going to cut through his arm like butter.  I tried to stop him from using it by telling him not to use that one, it was too dangerous.  He shouted over me and I threatened to call 911.  He slashed his arm harder than he intended to and cut it to the bone causing me to call 911 and have my own little panic attack..  The instant the knife slid across his skin he realized he’d make a terrible mistake and between the two of us we got a tourniquet on and he pressed a towel into it while I called for help, which took forever to arrive.  When they did they’d sent the cavalry, four officers were joined by three firemen and two EMT’s, all asking questions he couldn’t answer but they didn’t want me to.

    After what felt like a lifetime we all left at once.  I followed the ambulance down unfamiliar streets to a hospital I didn’t know in a neighborhood I wasn’t familiar with..  At one point it got ahead of me thanks to a red light that I swear never turned yellow.  They made it through and I didn’t.  Until then my eyes never left my son through the window of the back doors of the ambulance.  The light changed and I broke speed records down the hill and up again and saw the ambulance again as it turned a corner.  By the time it reached the hospital I was back on it’s tail.  No place to park.  Down the block I turned around and found a tiny parking spot directly across the street from the ambulance doors.  I can’t parallel park.  Never could.  I put that car in the smallest spot I’ve ever seen in my life like I did it ten times a day every day. 

    I couldn’t get in though the ambulance doors.  I had to walk around the corner to the door of the emergency department.  He wasn’t checked in yet, but they would call me.  It seemed like two minutes.  I didn’t even find a magazine.  By the time I got to his room he was already undressed, had an IV in, they’d taken blood and wrapped the cut.  Five hours of waiting...waiting for x-rays ... waiting for him to go to the bathroom...waiting for social workers...waiting for the girl in the next “room” to stop hallucinating...waiting for stitches.  Waiting...waiting...waiting...hoping he’s learned his lesson and stops cutting.  They asked for insurance information.  I pulled out three different cards before I found out his insurance is inactive.  What am I going to do now?  My son is hurt.  I have no money and no insurance.  But he is safe and I am ok for one more day.  The cut will heal and hopefully he will leave the knives alone.

   

Ha!  I remembered this time!  This post comes before the letter in the post before it. It's about what came before A's hospital stay and leading up to it.

    I have seen some pretty horrifying things in my life, but there is nothing more horrifying than having your child try to kill himself in front of you other than that he was successful.  Mine has tried it twice.  Both times I was close enough to see it coming, but too far away to stop it.  The second time was not intended to go the way it did so I suppose it doesn’t really count, but the first time, though it had no chance at success, was every bit intentional.  I was on the phone arguing with the school to leave us alone while I worked to get him into a mental hospital. I was trying to get him admitted for a week long evaluation that was recommended by his counselor. They were insisting he had to be in school while we waited to hear if there was a bed ready.  They thought I could just pick him up when I got the word.  By that time discomfort at being in an environment as dirty as a school, surrounded by people he didn’t know had evolved into pure terror at the very idea.  While I was talking he heard me say something about someone from the school coming to pick him up and take him in.  He grabbed a belt that was nearby and wrapped it around his neck and tried to attach it to a plant hook.  The last thing I said to them was he’s trying to hang himself and I hung up and got him down.  Instead of a trip to school he got a trip to the hospital and an expedited entry to the mental hospital for evaluation.

    Our battle with the school started in October.  He started feeling sick and missed several days with what seemed like the flu.  Then he started telling me about the things he was afraid of.  We were seeing a counselor regularly.  He had trouble with his homework and they started keeping him after school.  The night before the crisis he had stayed from 2:30 when school got out until 6:30 when I went to pick him up.  The principal wanted to keep him another half hour to do something the class hadn’t even done yet.  A could take no more and I couldn’t blame him.  The school was just not equipped to handle someone with his problems and the state law was too rigid for us to operate safely for A.       

    We had already come to the conclusion from his behavior that one problem was OCD.  We had arrangements for a bed for him the day before he went, but the situation was such a shock for his father, who did not live with us, that he wanted to talk about it first because he didn’t see that it “was necessary.”  He’d never seen any odd behavior so therefore it didn’t exist.  The two hour delay lost A his room and we had to start over,  meaning he had to go to school.  Through the hospital evaluation, during which he was hospitalized for a week, we became acquainted with PTSD and the other members of the mental unhealth alphabet that inhabits my beautiful boy.

    He went back to school after winter break armed with the report from the hospital and a request for an Individual Education Plan (IEP).  During his hospital stay the school was supposed to be sending his homework to the hospital.  Instead they just let it pile up so he started out behind anyway and went back to the cycle of punishment instead of encouragement.  I kept asking for the IEP and finally in February the school told me they “didn’t have time” to work out an IEP for him, something that is required by the same laws they were using against us to charge us with truancy and contributing to truancy.  Finally one day the police liaison - fancy talk for truant officer - showed up at my door to give me a ticket for contributing.  I drove the 60 miles to the state capital that day to sign a form to home school and A hasn’t set foot in a school since then.  That was eighth grade.  He was 13 years old.

    I didn’t want to home school him.  I knew he wouldn’t do any work I gave him.  We tried online academies.  Same thing.  He never even logged on.  I basically let him study up on whatever tickled his brain and he gave himself a good education in history, social studies, English grammar, pretty much every subject except math.  He was ready to take his GED a year ahead of time, though the agoraphobia keeps him out of a classroom to prepare for the test.  In our state the class is required so he has to work up to it.  He has been talking about doing it though so there is hope.  He’s been going into places more, though only if they aren’t crowded.  I sincerely feel that if he is allowed to work at his own pace he will find his way to a more normal lifestyle.  I get a lot of people telling me to “quit babying him”, but I don’t feel it’s babying him to let him find his own way at his own pace.  Forcing him is what got him into the shape he’s in now and as long as he keeps testing his limits it’s progress.

    The doctors and counselors tried giving him medication, but he never took it long enough to make a difference and he was comfortable with his various “things.”  I managed to keep him going until he was 15, but he never talked.  The only answers he gave to any question was “I don’t know.”  When he was told that as of the age of 14 he could reuse treatment that was exactly what he did.  Another thing his dad can’t wrap his head around.  He keeps giving me choices and ultimatums to get A into treatment.  A has agreed to have another evaluation, but that is as far as he’s willing to go.  He’s comfortable with his life the way it is.  I’m not okay with it, but the state has taken it out of my hands.  I want my boy to be happy and live a prosperous life, but the prospect scares the hell out of him.

I was looking through some of my old files and I found this letter I wrote to A's father in 2008.   This was three months after A tried to kill himself because he could not stand to set foot in his school one more time.  I have another post written about the incident so I won't tell the whole thing here.  At this time his father had a job in another state from where we were living.  We had been separated for just over a year and he'd been out of work until just shortly before this letter.  He lived in a one bedroom studio apartment and wanted us to move there and live with him because I was having financial trouble and I had just pulled A out of school to homeschool him because the school district just wasn't getting it.  A was 13 at the time...

Dear,

I understand your frustration and anger with me right now.  I did not plan to get into trouble again or plan to hurt you or A..  In fact the trouble escalated by trying not to hurt A.  The honest truth is that neither you nor I can survive the way things are now.  I don’t have enough to pay rent, buy food, gas for the car and pay bills and neither do you.  I see the wisdom in us moving there, but the air of hostility coming from you does not help me to make that decision.  There are things you need to understand before any move is made for us to join you.  Our building has been sold and I’ve told my landlord that we may or may not be moving at the end of March.

Right now A is protesting.  Before you go off and start thinking he doesn’t want to be with you or doesn’t love you stop it right now.  That is not true.  But you need to realize that he has serious problems and it has nothing to do with discipline.  He spent a lot of energy trying to hide his problems from you, but they have been accumulating since he was seven years old.  He is afraid you will not understand his problems or respect them.  He’s also afraid you will yell at him all the time and that he will find it impossible to live in a one bedroom apartment because he needs some space of his own.  Yes, he has problems with depression, but that is minor to the other things.  I’m sending a recent photo of him.  He looks like that most of the time unless he tells a joke.  Once in awhile he’s in a lighter mood and more like his old self.  That is happening more and more lately.  He has definitely been diagnosed with OCD and other anxiety disorders.  Taking him out of school to home school him was not a choice I made lightly.  His anxiety about school had reached a height I could no longer deal with and his daily threats of suicide were more than I could bear.  He was going all day without going to the bathroom because he can’t use a public rest room.  He would go directly to take a shower, not even hugging me or saying hello, as soon as he walked in the door.  His comfort zone is very small.  There is no rational thought to what he does.  Some days he takes three showers, depending on if we’ve left the house or not.  If his arm or clothing touches a door or other surface he may have a meltdown.  There are times he is trapped in the bathroom for a half hour washing his hands because he has touched something or something has touched him.  He went through six bars of soap in a little under two weeks.  He has three bars of soap in the shower, one for me, one for his top half, and one for his bottom half.  There is an extra one on the sink for washing his feet.  He insists on doing the laundry and screams if I touch the basement door, even if it has been sprayed with Lysol, but he washes everything twice and only small loads because he can only use one hand to move things from the washer to the dryer.  He is afraid I will contaminate the clean laundry by touching it with “dirty” hands that have touched the door, railing, or machines, or dirty clothes taking them down to be washed.  I can not reconcile this with the fact that he wants the space around his couch to be dirty, with trash mixed in with his belongings.  He does not understand the consequences of this or understand that when something is ruined it is because of the mess.  It is totally irrational and rational people can not figure it out or reason him out of it.  You will have to think of him as Monk in that he thinks everybody feels as he does and he can’t relate to anyone else’s feelings right now.  You and I are Stottlemeyer and Sharona and will be frustrated as hell sometimes, but anger isn’t going to do anything but make it worse.  We will need to find help as soon as possible and the whole family will need to be involved.  I will see if I can get a referral. At least we will have a few more weeks with Erin.  Hopefully some progress will be made and Ethan will be less anxious.

Because of his anxieties he can NOT be enrolled in a normal school setting.  They don’t understand and are not equiped to deal with him.  At this point he would probably end up in a school that is teaching where he should have been and he will be lost.  He has had no world history past the Renaissance, no U.S. history or State history at all.  Three different middle schools in three different grades have taught the same things. If we can get the depression under control to a point where he is motivated again and excited he could work at his own pace and graduate from High School early.  Your support and help can make a big difference.  At his age it is mostly self taught with guidance and assignments.  We could find tons of great stuff to do around there that would be interesting and teach him many important things.  The first thing we need is library cards. 

He has become such a picky eater he makes you look easy to feed.  Somehow he manages to eat nutritiously though.  He favorites are salads and thank God he still likes baby carrots.  We eat quite a bit of chicken and not much beef besides hamburger.

Now, about me.  I can cook and do dishes with help, especially chopping stuff.  I always liked it when we did dishes together. It would be fun to make soup together again.  My back will never be better than it is now and anything that puts pressure or torque on my lower back is very, very bad.  I can only lift about five pounds without problems. The joints in my thumbs have worn away and a cyst that was on one of my tendons in my right hand calcified into an extra bone that rubs against where the two bones meet near my wrist.  I still have Vicodin and Percocet, but I don’t use it unless I do something stupid and I’m in more pain than I can bear.  If it is bad enough I can’t walk straight because my balance is affected.  Then I take the pain pill and sit it out.  Again, your help will make the difference.

If you can read all of this and at least pretend that you would be happy to have us come up there then I have no objections.  It would be better for all of us.



This was just a year after I'd had two back surgeries and I had permanent nerve damage in my lower back.  A's father has never been able to accept that I am disabled and ha never accepted any responsibility for the causes of A's anxiety problems, though I believe his PTSD comes from watching his father trying to drink himself to death for three years before we finally had enough and left him.  He has never been helpful or supportive.  As an alcoholic he lives in a constant state of denial and can not see any point but his own and shows no respect for A or his debilities.   A saw through his father at the time and insisted we move back to my boyfriend's house ten months after we'd left it because he felt safer there than with his father.  A's father insists there is something I can do to suddenly make A well enough to live his life normally.  A is now 18 and after three years of paying only child support and no spousal support he now wants to cut us off.  We've been separated for six years and I never asked for anything for myself all that time because I knew he couldn't afford it.  Now I'll only have my $300 SSI for income and they may want to take that away because A is technically an adult and can make his own way.  What do I do now?

I admit it.  I've been lax this week too.  Somehow the week has been getting away from me and before I know it the sun is setting on Thursday and I haven't posted my blog entry.  Things have been going rather smoothly lately and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.  On the other hand A is up to two showers a week and they are lasting roughly five hours instead of the normal three.

We survived the cat ordeal of  few weeks ago.  The cats are still with us.  I will fight to the death for them as I would for A, even if we have to move.  They have lived here almost as long as we have, now over two years, and they haven't done anything to harm anyone.  A still jumps at the sound of steps on the stairs or a knock at the door, but so far no one has wanted to come in.

All in all I should be enjoying the peace, but I've lived so long without it I don't know what to do with myself!  I ask for your patience if you're a regular reader.  Check back often.  I'm sure I will eventually remember what day it is and post something.  I do apologize because I did say I would be regular with my posts.  Thank you for stopping by.  Leave me a note if you've enjoyed anything I've had to say.  Oops.  The bathroom door just opened.  I have to go cook some rice for my hungry boy.

The week got away from me and I missed last night's post.  I'm sorry.  Things have been so crazy for the last week and I was completely focused on a doctor's appointment tomorrow because I missed one a couple of weeks ago.  We were in the middle of a crisis and I lost track of the days then too.  The rest of this may explain why.

I can’t really complain too much about A and his things, because I have them too, but once in a while our things butt heads with one another and it’s awful.  A has a hard time adjusting to new pets.  When he was about ten we lost his favorite cat.  At that point all of the cats we had were there when he was born so he grew up with them.  When Natasha died though he lost his best friend.  She was wonderful, didn’t play favorites, just made sure everybody got loved in turn.  My husband and I were at work when A called to say something was wrong with her.  I went home to check it out and took her to the vet.  They wanted to keep her overnight and try giving her fluids.  The next morning when they checked on her she was gone.  Later that year my husband went to California to work temporarily and brought home a new cat.  A wasn’t ready.  He was upset that his dad would bring home a new cat to take Natasha’s place.  We tried explaining that she couldn’t do that.  She came to make a place of her own with people who would love her.  It still took over a year before he could really be affectionate to her.

When he and I came here we had three cats with us, two he’d grown up with and the new one.  The two old ones died within a month of each other.  The mama ex-feral cat I have now had a batch of kittens out on our porch.  All but one of them disappeared by the time they were two months old.  One night she and his dad and another stray that hung out with them left the poor little guy all alone out on the porch and he was crying up a storm.  Mama cat had been helping me acclimate him to touching, petting, and picking up for cuddles.  He was so sad, and LOUD!  So he came in the house.  A didn’t like it because he was “dirty.”  He’d been outside.  It was over a year before he would pet him and be nice.  Until then he chased him and made very unfriendly noise at him.  A doesn’t remember that because they the best of pals now.

After we moved out of my boyfriend’s house I went back and caught Mamacat and her latest batch of kittens.  Two out of three survived that time.  Again, A can’t stand them and is mean to them because they were outside.  Mama was pregnant again when I caught her and she had the kittens on the floor of my bedroom.  I found homes for all but one of those kittens and one of the middle kittens I’d caught with her died when she was ten months old.  That was two years ago.  Now he tries to pet the youngest one and can’t figure out why she runs.  I couldn’t be because he’s spent most of the last two years chasing her and yelling at her.  Anyway our family now includes the one my husband brought from California, Mamacat and one “kitten” from each of her three litters.  The oldest of the younguns is A’s pal, the other three are afraid of him, though Mama lets him get away with quite a bit.

Enter our landlord.  We have pretty much avoided inspections because A gets freaked out and doesn’t calm down for a week at the mere prospect of someone who is not him and is not me coming into our apartment. The manager let me write a letter explaining the situation and asking that they skip our apartment.  Most of the time they respect that. Well, we were out one day.  Mamacat and the two were shut up in their room.  It was a hot day and the place smelled.  The litter boxes are right by the door as you come in.  So when I went to pay my rent (instead of saying something two weeks ago when it happened) I was told they would have to go or we’d be evicted.  So I am running my self ragged trying to find a place for them to go.  It’s killing me because when I make a commitment to an animal it’s for life.  They become like my children.  Because A doesn’t like them and doesn’t want them here he’s overjoyed at the prospect of them being gone and dismayed that I’m not doing something every waking minute to get rid of them.  I have called a rescue.  They haven’t called me back.  All they have is voicemail.  The local shelter is not a no-kill for cats and I am not going to turn them over only to have two years of my hard work and love walked into a euthanasia room.  Not only that they have a fee to take them.  If I’m going to pay a fee I’d rather board them. That same fee will pay for three days of boarding.  A says “that’s not an option.”  I can’t blame him because he’s truly afraid of being homeless.  I’ve called my boyfriend, who has always been on my side when it comes to cats.  He was with me when both of my babies died and the age of 18 and 17.  He held me while I cried.  He knows.  Why doesn’t my own son, who has been with me since birth and grew under my heart not understand I can’t just through them out to be eaten by coyotes or whatever is out there?  They were here for TWO YEARS without a problem.  What am I supposed to do?  Anybody who says “They’re only cats” without suggesting a real solution will be booted off.  They are not ONLY cats.  They are loving, living creatures who depend on me and deserve loving homes.  Why should I have to give them up because I love them and A doesn’t?  Why does he get to make the rules all the time when I’m supposed to be in charge?  Along with all of this I've been breaking my back trying to get as much cat hair out of the carpet as I can because I'm having the carpet cleaned.  I was planning to do it anyway before the manager gave me the bad news.  I seldom have enough to buy groceries let alone have the carpet cleaned.

UPDATE: I never found a home for them.  The cats are back with me after being boarded for a week.  My wonderful, supportive boyfriend paid the boarding fee for me when my card wouldn’t work and was frozen.  That’s another $500 I owe him on top of many, many other bail-outs.  A is beside himself with fear.  Three days after the cats came home we got another notice and he’s still in a panic.  They are installing carbon monoxide detectors in apartments that are all electric and have no CO emissions.  He asks me everyday what are we going to do with the cats if there’s another inspection and when they come to install the detectors.  I have no answers.  I can only take it one day at a time as it presents itself.  I’ve been looking for rent-to-own homes hoping we can move out of here and have the freedom to take care of ourselves and our cats without intrusion from others.  My credit is so bad though I don’t know how I can do it.  All I can do is hope and pray.

 LONG POST ALERT!!!!

    I’ve started this post over in my mind at least three times.  I started out “I’ve lived in fear for most of A’s life.”  Then I realized “I’ve lived in fear most of my adult life.”  Then I thought about it some more and realized that I’ve really lived in fear for most of my entire life!  When I was little I was as fearless as the next child.  I climbed onto the fence of the bull pen and then couldn’t get down and somebody had to come and rescue me before the bull figured out I was there.  I don’t remember wearing shoes in the summer until I was at least ten.  I stepped on a lot of bees.  And cigarette butts that were still burning.

    I don’t remember feeling fear until I had to go to school.  Like most kids when I got to a certain age I got excited about going to school.  As a toddler I lived next to a country school house and I watched the kids at recess.  I loved going shopping for pencils and stuff for school.  When I got there I learned very quickly that other kids could sense a weakness and take advantage of it.  I’d grown up around adults and had never been teased before.  I took it very personally and cried, which naturally made things worse.  After the first month of school I was transferred to a different school closer to home.  The very one I had lived next door to when I was younger.  We’d moved into a house “in town” when I was five and in the meantime a house had been built where our garden was, but I knew the school well. 

    There were two other kids who had been sent to the wrong school and we all started at the new one together.  Otherwise I didn’t know any of the other kids.  Because I was unfamiliar with teasing and bullying I lived in fear for my life.  My mother tried to teach me the old “sticks and stones” saw, but that really didn’t make the words hurt any less.  It didn’t help that I nearly died over the winter and missed a great deal of school.  When I got back I had to stay in at recess to catch up on my work.  I had a few friends, but only one lived near me and I was too little to walk to her house to play.

    Things didn’t change much as I grew because the bullies grew too and got even bullier.  In ninth grade the boy who sat across the aisle from me in study hall took a disliking to my dress and when the teacher wasn’t looking he would give me a punch to the arm.  By the end of the day I had a bruise that covered my entire upper arm.  Even though it was the spring and it was hot I wore long sleeves to cover it up.  One of the girls in my home ec class saw part of the bruise when I rolled up my sleeves and told the teacher.  The teacher made me show her the whole arm and marched me down to the principal’s office and he made me wait there while he called the boy down and made him apologize.  I’m not sure what fear turns into when it gets worse than terror, but I felt it.

    I spent most of high school afraid that there would never be someone for me to marry.  These were the early days of women’s lib when it was hoped that I could be whatever I wanted to be, but the reality would probably be I’d end up being a wife and mother - IF I could find a husband, which didn’t seem likely there.  So off to college I went.  I went to a small technical college in a big city, at least it was big to me then.  I’ve lived in much bigger cities since then.  But I digress.  There I was afraid I’d get lost.  I was afraid I couldn’t find my classes or get there on time.  I was afraid of so many, many things I can’t remember them all.  I made it through orientation, made a new friend, and found my way home again!  First day licked.  Second day I walked into typing class - on time I might add - and saw the scruffiest hippiest looking man I ever saw in my life.  My first thought was that it would kill my dad if I brought him home.  He was in every one of my classes.  I had to fight every shyness cell in my body to speak to him, but after the fourth class in a row I had to know if he was going to be in all of them, so I asked.  He was.  After the next day we spent every break together and started going out.  We got married nine months later.  Partly because we fell in love, partly because I never thought I’d find anybody else, and partly because I wanted to show everybody at home I could find somebody and get married before I was 19 or 20.  The wedding was one month before I turned 19.

    Then I lived in fear that he would leave me.  He threatened to regularly for 23 years.  Anytime he felt like I was getting beyond his control he would threaten.  We actually separated several times.  Once he threw me out of our apartment and I had to go back to my mother’s because he wanted me to quit my job and I didn’t want to.  He got his way because I didn’t have any choice but to pack up and go 100 miles back to my parents.  A month later we were back together again.  We separated again nine months later for financial reasons.  We each got better jobs in different places and started saving up so we could have a place of our own again.  I got hurt at work, he came to see me and because we didn’t end up having sex he asked for a divorce.  It felt like a punch to the gut.  I’d been working so hard to get back together and he’d been dating!  So I filed for divorce.  He came up for the hearing, one thing led to the other and the divorce was over.  Back together again.  It took six months.  After that he liked to pull out the D card every once in awhile.  More than once I was ready to go along with it, but he wouldn’t move out.  I didn’t think I could make it on my own.  I had no idea about spousal support after a certain number of years.

    Then A was born.  Perhaps the greatest fear of all came after I found out I was expecting A.  First I was afraid I couldn’t carry him the whole time.  I was afraid I would lose him, like the others.  A was baby number four and the only one I carried past the first two months.  Then I went into preterm labor at six months!  He was saved, but I lived for three months on bed rest - not as easy as you’d think!  Then he didn’t move!  You couldn’t make that kid move for anything!  Not even the occasional foot sticking out of my belly!  Nothing!  After he was born I was afraid of SIDS.  Then it was abduction.  I never let him out of my sight.  The hardest thing was baby and me classes.  He was going to have to be an only.  There was too much risk to my life to try again.  I didn’t want him to grow up like I did without any other kids around.

    Aside from the fear for A these were wonderful, happy, challenging years when we were a real family.  His dad got a great job.  We bought a beautiful house and two cars.  Dad left for work at a little before seven.  A was pre-programmed to wake up at 6:30 (I swear he was born waking up at 6:30 every morning!).  He would climb out of his crib and race down the hall to see his dad before he left for work.  He went to a day care where he was well watched and protected. 

    We lived in a small town, the kind where everybody knows everybody else, even if it isn’t by name.  They had a fall festival with a one K race for kids.  A wanted to run in that race so badly.  He was an athletic kid who loved to run and climb on anything, including the piles of dirt and machines at the construction site across the street - under strict supervision!  He trained for that race by running around our block with me following him.  The day of the race comes and dad picks a big fight over whether he should run or not.  Dad says no.  I don’t want to let him down so we leave dad in a snit.  Problem: the plan was for Dad to be on one end of the race and I was going to be on the other.  Now there’s only one of us.  There is a landmark at the end of the race and A is told to go to that landmark and not leave it until I get there.  He knows about stranger danger.  I can walk faster than a four year old can run can’t I?  It’s only three blocks.  I take photos of the race starting then get out of the way and head for the other end at a fast pace.  I don’t make it in time for the end of the race.  A is no where to be found.  I find neighbors and ask.  They haven’t seen him.  I panic.  I walk back to the other end in case he’s gone to find me.  No A.  Back to the finish where I fall apart asking everybody I can find.  Finally a policeman is coming to help when someone asks if that’s him across the street.  IT IS!  I run to him crying my eyes out in relief.  He can’t imagine what’s wrong and the woman holding his hand tries to explain.  She saw him faltering toward the end and went out to encourage him, then took him to look for me.  I must have passed them at least twice.  I can’t believe what I’m hearing, but he’s safe in my arms trying to comfort me, to get me to stop crying because it’s ok.  He never leaves my sight again until he’s 13 at the county fair with a group of friends and still I was afraid the whole time!.  I can still feel that panic and terror today as I’m writing this.

    I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from that sick feeling of terror.  It never leaves me.  Even when I leave him outside in the car to wait for me while I shop of get him a book or get our food.  He’s almost 18 and I don’t think I will ever stop being afraid that he’ll hurt himself and I won’t be there to help him.  I know he can defend himself now and he can call for help.  He’s six and a half feet tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds!  He knows how to defend himself.  I think I’ll be afraid for him until the day I die.