// Saturday, 26. September 2009 //
Gosh, my legs are still shaking, every mother will understand.... that sinking feeling when you fear for your child... Luckily, I can laugh about it now, feel a bit embarrassed - but the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
Yesterday, my son Dan (the 15-year old) called me at work around 8 am to tell me he's got bad headache and is feeling unwell, he wants to stay at home and not go to school. He suffers from migraines so this was not exactly unusual. I just told him to take a paracetamol and ring me if it gets worse. What I do usually is ring him every hour to make sure he's ok. Somehow I forgot, and remembered him around noon. I called the landline and mobile phone - no answer. I tried for the next hour without success, phones were ringing, but no reply. I knew that he just wouldn't go out, anyhow, where would he go, as all his friends were in school, and he just doesn't go shopping on his own like that. I quickly really started to panick and of course imagining the worse. By chance, my colleague's mother lives hin the same town as I, and she kindly agree to go to our address. She than knocked on the door for 15 mins, again nothing.
By now I was physically sick and shaking like a leaf. We than decided to call the police. Luckily, my colleague is a trained 999 operator, and so she took full control of the situation - exactly what I needed. Police were on the scene within 10 minutes. They asked me whether they can break in if they don't get a reply - I said yes. One officer knocked again on the front door, and the other jumped over the fence into the back garden. And that's when Bonnie saved the day (and our front door) - on seeing a person in the back garden, she went mad, barking and running up and down the stairs. That is what woke Dan up - yes, he's been fast asleep!
1 day ago
2 comments:
Oh mein Gott, Peggy, da wär ich aber auch mehr als beunruhigt gewesen, wenn ich weiß, mein Kind ist krank, und auf einmal geht keiner ans Telefon! Schon klar, dass dir das heute vielleicht peinlich ist - muss es aber nicht sein. Was würden denn die Leute, die für deine Reaktion kein Verständnis aufbringen, über dich sagen, wenn wirklich etwas nicht ok gewesen wäre? Denen kannst du es so oder so nicht recht machen - und ich glaube, die meisten Mütter können deine Reaktion und Panik absolut nachempfinden.
You did absolutely the right thing. No choice. You had to make sure he was all right. I sympathise. I spent a few fraught hours when my daughters were younger, out alone and not answering their phones after they should have been home. The explanation was always innocuous - trains stuck in tunnels, phone battery dead, etc - but it's a horrible horrible feeling. I don't think there's anything else quite like it. (Maybe that's why I write scarey crime fiction . . . ?)
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