Perpetual Ruminations

October's a Scary Month

I see the Blogging Bliss Newsletter is out and here I am ten days without a post. Guess I better get writing before I read the Newsletter.

It's been an interesting month with a couple of very deep scares already. The first was my wife getting amnesia; technically Transient Global Amnesia. It hit while she was making us lunch and lasted most of the day. The deepest fear for me was not knowing what was wrong, how serious it was, and what else might be happening to her. But, after hours in the hospital and a gazillion tests, there was nothing wrong except for her loss of recent memories and her not being able to write new memories. By that night, she had regained most of her memory, was starting to write memories again, and just missing the events of that terrifying day. Even though it ended almost as quickly as it set in, it left her with a fear of everything vanishing for almost a week.

We barely had recoupled from this when my youngest daughter decided to see what was under a manhole lid. Her and a couple of friends managed to pry it up enough for her to get her fingers under it and lift it up. But, weighing as much as they do, it didn't go up and she got her fingers smashed under it. Again, it looked far worse than it was and she got by without any broken bones, just a lot of bruised and sore fingers.

Less than a week after this, I was supposed to pick her up after school for an appointment. Traffic was bad, I was already running late, and a train decided it was a good time to cross my path. I finally got to the school about twenty minutes behind schedule. I anticipated her being a bit upset with me being late, but I did not foresee her not being there.

When she did not come out within a few minutes, I went in and had her paged. She did not show. I waited for a bit, then drove around the school, thinkin perhaps she got sidetracked  and found something to do while she waited. She wasn't anywhere to be found. I called home, now convinced she had forgotten and taken the bus home. By this time she would be inside, likely watching TV. She wasn't home, either. Her sister, who was home, ran to a few of her friends places to see if she had gotten of the bus and went to a friends.

She called me back, with another nope, she hadn't gone to any of her friends, either. By this time I'm fighting panic and all the bad thoughts that flash into a parents mind. Another call and I find out from one of her friends grandma that she had called over there, finally. She had gone home with a friend from school, called her other friend and gave her the phone number and an address.

I didn't know who the friend or her parents were but thought it must be close to home, so I drove home and tried to call the number, it went straight to voice-mail. I looked the address up on the computer but it did not exist. The grandmother had written it down wrong, but I had no way of knowing this. I grabbed a notebook and jotted down what she had on that morning as well as her age, height, and weight, and was just looking for a recent photo to have handy when I called the police to report her missing when my phone rang.

The phone number was her friends and they had turned it off so I couldn't call and make her come home right away. Of course this was because she new she was in trouble and didn't want to ruin her fun before it hit. I got the right address and had to drive back up by the school, her friend lives in walking distance, and pick her up.

Everything again turned out fine, but I've handled about as many scares as I can for one month.