The Day We Couldn't Speak

Today, as I pushed the grocery cart through the aisles at Wal-Mart with Baby Girl and OBB in tow, I looked up at one point and my eyes met with the Christmas Shoppe. In our fancy new Wal-Mart, the Christmas Shoppe takes over what really is the nursery/landscaping area during the winter months. As soon as I saw the sign, the memory of that day last December came flooding back. And I started to feel sick to my stomach.

This is a story that I haven’t told on my blog because when something like this happens, you don’t have words for it. You need time to get to a place where you can even talk about it. Now, almost a year later, I think I’m finally there.

It was the Saturday before Christmas - December 19, 2009. All of our Christmas shopping was done, and my husband’s Christmas vacation had begun. It had snowed the night before, and we went to Wal-Mart to walk around and look at the decorations and pick up a couple things. Our first stop was the Christmas area. OBB loved looking at the inflatables that moved and played music, so we headed there first. It was about 10 a.m. and as we walked around the Christmas Shoppe, we were really the only ones in that area. Baby Girl sat in the cart I was pushing, and she and I meandered around, looking at the different decorations. At one point, I called my WH over to look at something I had found – little bottles of Coke shaped like Christmas ornaments. It was silly, really – and at the time I didn’t even think about what OBB might be doing. But after we chuckled at the ornament-shaped bottles, we looked at each other and in that moment, we realized neither one of us had OBB.

“Where is he?” I asked my husband. We both started calling his name. Surely, he was just over looking at some inflatable penguin or reindeer, just an aisle or two from us. But no. We soon realized he wasn’t in the entire landscaping area. As soon as we figured this out, I knew we were in trouble.

My husband ran into the main store and started looking for him. We started calling his name in the toy area. As I followed my WH back through the sliding doors, into the main store, I saw the little blue sign on the glass door – Code Adam. And it clicked. I needed a Code Adam right now. I went back into landscaping, found an associate, walked up to her and said, "My son is missing…and he’s three."

This is the part that impressed me. This woman dropped what she was doing, grabbed her radio and started the Code Adam process. She gave a description – what he was wearing, how old he was and we started walking. The other two women working in the area with her also dropped what they were doing and started looking for him. I felt like every associate in the store was looking for my son. And yet the minutes ticked by.

I pushed my cart up and down aisles, calling his name, trying not to completely freak out. My stomach turned over and over. At one point, I glanced out the front door into the icy parking lot, covered in snow. “What if he went out in the parking lot, looking for us?” Then I thought, “At what point should we call the police?” I couldn’t believe I was this mother. I felt like I was going to throw up. And yet, the minutes kept ticking by.

We walked and walked through the store with the Wal-Mart associate by my side, on the radio. So this is how it happens, I thought. This is how people lose their children. But how could I let this happen? It was so quick, so fast. In an instant, he was gone.

And then I felt the tears start. As we got to the center of the store, all I could feel was the time passing by, as if there was a giant clock in my head banging TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK very slowly. I knew the longer it took us to find him, the less likely it was that we would. I started to despair. My mind was racing with terrible thoughts. I couldn’t believe I had lost my child 5 days before Christmas.

Even the store associate with me was trying to calm me down at this point. There was no news on the radio, but she kept trying to console me and comfort me.

And then all of a sudden, someone came over the radio. The associate turned to me and said three words that changed everything - “We got him”. He was halfway across the store, and when an associate approached him, he had run from her. But they had him.

As OBB walked toward me, I knelt down to hug him. And my immediate instinct was to put him in the grocery cart. Somehow in my mind, with the point that I was at, I just needed him to be contained and safe.

We left the store without buying anything, and we drove home in silence. My husband and I couldn’t even form words – we were still so sick from what had happened. In fact, for the rest of the day, we felt nauseous, physically ill. How close had we come to losing him? The reality of it just shattered us.

But I have to say that the Wal-Mart associates were consummate professionals. They executed their plan perfectly, and it resulted in finding my son in a 200,000 square foot store in under 5 minutes. I am incredibly thankful for them.

And so I think every Christmas, I will look at the Christmas Shoppe at Wal-Mart and reflect on how fortunate I am that they found my son and he’s safe and sound. But I think for a while, when I look at it, it’s going to make me have that feeling like the bottom of my stomach is going to drop out. But that’s ok. Every once in a while, you have to get pushed to the end of yourself in order to understand how truly blessed you really are.