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The Seven Minutes When I Thought I’d Lost My Son Forever
On the tension between holding our kids close and letting them go
Mechanical failure.
Those are two words you never want to hear in reference to an airplane that is carrying your seven-year-old child. Particularly when it happens to be the first airplane on which your child has ever ridden alone.
My son was excited for his first solo plane trip, felt like a Big Boy. Couldn’t wait to get his very own can of 7-Up. Will they give me extra snacks? he wanted to know.
His grandmother, my mother-in-law, had dropped him off at the airport in Salt Lake City. His grandfather, my father, would pick him up in San Francisco. My 10-year-old daughter was staying on in Salt Lake to have some special time with Granny.
Meanwhile, I was sitting outside a café in our hometown of Portland, Oregon, taking advantage of the hours of free time that stretched ahead of me to catch up on some writing. My mother-in-law had texted about 30 minutes earlier to let us know she’d watched the plane take off. Before boarding, my son had given Granny his wide, warm signature hug, then walked confidently down the jetway.
All was well.
Or so I thought.
In our nine years in Portland, my partner and I had never had a weekend at home without the kids. We had managed a couple of rushed weekend getaways (as in two), but we’d never enjoyed the leisure and comfort of home without work or children.
Throughout the preceding week, I kept marveling at the quiet that had nestled itself into corners and walls of our home. I could actually hear thoughts swirling through my head. When I came upstairs after my workday, I couldn’t believe that everything was exactly where I had left it. There weren’t any Legos underfoot, no apple cores obscured by clouds of fruit flies on the counter, no hardening hunks of unwrapped cheese, no footprints on the toilet lid, no streaks on the mirror.
The countertop almost looked sheepish in its nakedness, accustomed to lurking beneath anything and everything that my children needed to put down whenever they happened to be in or near the kitchen. A thousand-piece puzzle graced our…
