Fear

Actually, it was more like shear terror.  Wait, no, it wasn't like shear terror, it absolutely was shear terror.  Today after school, Catherine had tone chime practice which meant Thomas would have to walk home by himself.  We hadn't discussed it this morning, because honestly, I forgot.  I was pretty sure they had forgotten as well, but it's a fairly small school building so I figured once Thomas found Catherine and realized what she was doing, he would just walk home by himself like he does every week.  I wasn't terribly concerned when he was five minutes late and he hadn't arrived yet because I assumed it had taken him some time to realize what was happening.  I decided to head out to meet him on his way home.  The more I walked though, the more concerned I became.  By the time I got to the school, I was fighting back tears.  School had now been out for 15 minutes...where could he possibly have gone?  I walked in the door and saw his teacher's daughter who is a sixth grader.  I asked if she had seen Thomas and she hadn't, but she walked with me to her mom's room.  No sign of him.  As I turned around, his teacher and three other third grade teachers (all of whom I love dearly!) came out of the room across the hall.  The tears began to flow as I said, "Thomas didn't come home."  I felt like an idiot because the calm and rational part of my head knew that he had to be there somewhere, but with all of the drama in our lives lately, this just pushed the tears over the edge.  Two teachers set off to find Catherine and see what she might know, and Thomas's teacher and another walked with me to the school office to see if they might know anything.  I kept apologizing for my tears.  These are people with whom I work, and crying just seemed so unprofessional.  It was only about two minutes after we arrived at the office that Thomas's teacher's daughter came running up with the information that he had been located.  Apparently Catherine had met him at their spot after school, and since I had not discussed with them that he should walk home, she decided to keep him there with her.  In fact, the teachers who located him reported that he was sitting there quite nicely and was working on his homework!  Of course when I saw him the tears were flowing again, and we all had a conversation about how things should have gone.  I explained that I wasn't at all mad at anyone, but Thomas very much understood how scared I had been.  I kept thinking of all the missing children that are reported, and even though I knew that the odds were that everything was fine, I was sure those parents had been certain the odds were everything was fine also.  I don't know that I'll ever forget that feeling when I looked at his teacher and said, "Thomas didn't come home."  Tonight, as we were sitting around the dinner table, I don't think I've ever been more grateful that we were all home, safe and sound!