If you are a parent and have young children around, you know how easy it is for a small child to wander away and disappear from sight. Sometimes it’s for minutes or hours depending of a number of things. My wife and I experienced the pain of loss several years ago. Our daughter, Judith, then four years old, was running around the house, underfoot and getting in the way; you know how it is.
Dorothy was trying to make the house look well planned, scrubbed and just plain perfect. I remember my own stupidity when I yelled at Judy for simply being underfoot. It was the same with Dorothy, she had a women’s group coming over in the afternoon to plan a special birthday for one of her members who was turning 100 years old.
Dot, which is what I call my wife sometimes, was in charge of the gathering and wanted everything to be absolutely perfect: clean, quiet and decorated just right. Judy came running and dancing through the house and knocked over a glass bowl. The bowl skidded across the table and fell to the wooden floor, but didn’t break, but Dot was harsh and yelled at Judy to get out and keep out of the way. Judy lowered her head and ran to her upstairs bedroom.
The ladies began showing up just a few minutes later. Dot nodded my way and I left for the bakery. Fifteen minutes later I was back. I took the cake and ice cream to the kitchen and carefully cut the slices and made sure everyone had a napkin and drink. Everything was absolutely beautiful.
I poked my head out to the living room and got the nod from Dot to start serving. I made sure each of the ladies had coffee or tea, silverware, a napkin and a nicely cut slice of cake with a dollop of red strawberry ice cream to top the bright yellow cake and made sure they all had refills of coffee or tea to balance out the dessert.
Once I got the nod from Dot, I took a piece of cake with all the same dressings I had given to the women and went to Judy’s room. It was empty. At first, I was just plain mad at Judy. “Where had she gone now!” I was careful not to disturb the guests. I went from room to room, upstairs, and downstairs and into the basement. No Judy. I went out back to check the garage to no avail. I circled the yard a couple of times, being careful not to be seen by the women inside. I didn’t want to create a disturbance.
As the cake party continued, I got more and more worried and caught my wife’s eye and just tapped my wristwatch to let her know it was time for people to leave. Once the women were gone, I told Dot that I could not find Judy. Panic immediately set off our mental alarms.
While Dot did the same thing at the house as I had, I walked around the block calling Judy, and returned home alone. We both had come up empty. We did it again, but this time we yelled for Judy here, there and everywhere. There was a park several blocks away so we drove over there and went through the same routine with the same results. When we got home, still no Judy.
I called the police and Dot and I waited more scared than ever. Pretty soon a police siren was blasting away. I had a list of strange people we had seen on our searches and gave it to the police officers in their car. Dot said, “I’m going to throw up, I’m going to throw up!” and ran into the house.
Even with the siren going full blast in the police car we all heard Dot’s scream. There sitting at the kitchen table was Judy, sitting peacefully with her own bowl of ice cream and strawberries; the red and white clues were circling her mouth like blood. We told Judy that we were sorry we were so short with her but she needed to learn that grown ups like to have friends over too!
Judy told us that to keep quiet for the gathering, she had pushed aside shoes and clothes in her closet to quietly play with her toys and dolls on the closet floor. Then as the women gathered and talked and talked and talked, Judy had gotten bored and took a nap in her closet. She woke up when the siren disturbed her sleep, she simply came downstairs and helped herself to the cake and ice cream.
We did feel sheepish when we told the police what had happened. They told us that they were happy it had ended so well. We told them that we were happy our beautiful daughter was at home, safe and helping herself to leftover ice cream and strawberries! That night when Dot and I went to bed we laughed and lauqhed and we both agreed that perhaps next time we would just put Judy in charge.
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