Stranded With Two Little Ones in Branson

{c}Stranded With Two Little Ones in Branson[/b}

“On my God has he really left us here?  Where did he go?  Surely, he wouldn’t leave us stranded in this resort town without any money, clothes, or car?  What in the world am I going to do if he doesn’t come back?  We’re 300 miles from home!  Am I going to have to call my family to come get us?  They live 100 miles away from here.  Do I have enough money in my purse to even call them?  Her stream of panicked thoughts is interrupted by 3-year-old Darren asking “Where’s Daddy’s car?”
         With all the calmness she could muster up out of her panic-stricken state, she says, “Daddy will be right back.  He must have gone to get gas or something?”
         Her 6-year-old son Lee asks, “Why didn’t Daddy take us with him?  When will he be back?”
         She absent-mindedly answers, “I don’t know.  Let’s go over here and play on those big rocks.”  Her panicked state escalates as the stream of thoughts continues.  What in the world am I going to do if he really doesn’t come back?  Would he really do that?  He has made so many threats in the past few years that I guess this could be THE time that he does carry through with one of them?  WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?
         “Look Mommy, this is a big rock.  Where’s Daddy?” asks Darren.”
         Again she answers, “I don’t know,” while pretending to be interested in the rock he holds in his precious little hand.
         Her thinking is going 90 miles a minute trying to figure out why he left her and the boys like this.  She tries to calm the intense panic that is trying to overtake her.  She has to figure out what to do.  The thoughts are rambling in so many different directions that she can’t think coherently.  This was supposed to be a fun-filled family vacation with going to Silver Dollar City, the animal reserve, and playing in the pool.  What happened to those plans?  I know he was upset that the motel room and food were costing more than planned and we were going got have to cut the vacation short one day in order to compensate for it.  But leaving the boys and I stranded wasn’t going to solve any problems.  It was going to create a lot more, especially if he didn’t come back.
         “Hey Mom, here comes Daddy's car!  Never mind, there’s a woman in it.”  He immediately went back to playing on the rocks.
         In that split second between Lee’s sentences, she felt a tremendous surge of relief that immediately changed to panic as she heard his second sentence that it wasn’t him.  Now she starts muttering to herself hoping saying things out loud will help her sort out her thoughts so she can think of what to do.  Then her thoughts are snapped back to “I can’t believe he left us here!”  Come on Susan, you’ve got to pull yourself together.  How do I explain this to the boys when I have no idea why he left without us.  What do I tell my family?  What will Richard do and say when I tell him I’ve called my family, if he comes back for us.  He might be so angry that he really does leave us here.  Oh yeah, better check to see how much money I do have.  She starts counting the money in her billfold.  She recounts the $15.28 cents thee times hoping she’s somehow miscounted it.  Okay, that’s not near enough for the motel room.  Do I have a key to the room?  What if he is checking out of the hotel room right now and headed back home without us?
         Now settle down Susan and think carefully, she tells herself.  You’ve got to figure out what to do because the boys are getting tired of climbing on the rocks.  Seems like I saw a police station a few blocks back up the street, but which one of those streets was it on?  Or, maybe I’d better just call someone in my family asking them to come get us.  But which family member do I call?  None of them like my husband very much.  My brother is the closest geographically but he really doesn’t like him.  Perhaps I could call Aunt Lola.  She would have to take off from work.  But she’s out of days off because she took to Australia for 15 days.  What in the world am I going to do?
         The sound of one of the boys crying interrupts her struggle to make a plan for their survival.  Darren has skinned his knee when his foot slipped off a rock.  So Mommy brushes off the dirt, reassures him its okay since it’s not bleeding, she kisses the boo-boo, and he is well again.  Back to the rocks he goes.
         Now, do we walk and hope to find the police station I saw?  Or, go back inside McDonald’s to ask someone for help.  Either choice is going to be extremely embarrassing.  But I have to do one or the other before it’s any darker.  She tells the boys they’re going back inside to wait for Daddy to come back.
         As tears start welling up in Lee’s eyes he asks her, “Did Daddy leave because I’ve been a bad boy?”
Susan wraps her arms around both the boys while telling them, and herself, that nothing, absolutely nothing, they have done or ever could do would stop Daddy from loving them.  She thought saying it out loud to them just might make it so.  “I’m sure he’ll be back any minute.  How about an ice cream cone?”
         Just as they get inside the door of McDonald’s in great anticipation of that first lick off their cones, Daddy pulls in with a big smile on his face.  Both boys ran out the door asking “Where did you go?  Why did you leave us here?”  With his weird smile that he gets when he is nervous, handed each of them a small cheap toy.  “So I could get these for you.”  As they got in the car and opened their junk toys, there was sad, little smiles with etchings of relief on their faces that he had came back to get us.

         When Susan saw her husband, her panic turned into extreme relief that he had returned for them.  Then, as quickly as the panic had turned to relief, tremendous anger erupted like an exploding volcano.  Through gritted teeth she asks, “Why in hell did you leave us here like that?”
         Without even glancing at her he answered, “Just to get gas.”  Then he looked at her for a second with that weird grin, “Did you think I left you here?  I was only gone for an hour.” He doesn’t even notice the tears now streaming down her cheeks.  “Now don’t make a scene and spoil our vacation.  The boys are happy and in the car.  Let’s go ride bumper cars.”
         Now she has a dilemma.  Does she get in the car and the four of them go on their merry way finishing their vacation?  Or, does she keep this conversation going?  After all, he could still take off again and leave her stranded for real the next time.  So she gets in the car and starts talking with the boys about their new toys.  Inside her that erupting volcano of emotions has been capped like a renegade oil well.  She plasters on an all too familiar fake smile and starts pretending she’s having a good time.
         When the family got home from their vacation, Susan waited, and waited, and watched for an opportune time to discuss with her husband what had happened when he had “gone to get gas.”  When she would broach the subject and try to tell him how scared she had been, he would say, “I wasn’t gone but a few minutes.  I just went to gas while you and the boys were in the bathroom.”  It did make sense that could have been what he had done.  But why did he leave without telling me where he was going?  Other times he would say, “If I stayed gone a little too long, it was just a joke.  After all we were on vacation and I was just trying to have fun with you?”
         After a few futile discussions ending this way, she began doubting her remembrance of the things had occurred.  Maybe she was making too big a deal out of what he intended for a joke.  With time she became convinced that she had over-reacted to the situation.
         With the passing of 24 years since that event, the memory was pushed back farther and farther into the abyss of Susan’s memories to the point of having been completely forgotten.  So what kind of cataclysmic event was it that uncapped that volcano of emotions and memories?  It was America’s day of terror on 9/11/2001.


NOTE:  stay tuned for the explanation of the connection between this event and 9/11.