Chicken-fish, yellow juice and a 4-year-old fugitive
By Primal Sneeze ~ March 25th, 2009. Filed under: Kids.
Lunch is always eventful with Seán. Less so with Oisín.
Oisín will eat anything put in front of him and much of what isn’t. Small animals scurry away from him.
Seán on the other hand has to be coaxed to the table just for a minute, coaxed to just taste the food, coaxed to eat just one more bit. When I say coaxed, I mean bribed and begged.
Saturday was no different. Oisín had finished and was straining to reach my plate from his high-chair. I tossed him a small animal.
Seán knelt on his chair declaring he didn’t like chicken-fish. Salmon to you and I. He wasn’t impressed with the yellow-juice either – the freshly squeezed orange had been diluted to prevent a recurrence of last week’s little-boy-bomb, which is like baby-bomb only extra-strength.
Seán, repeatedly: All done.
Oisín, repeatedly: All gone. More?!?!
And it was out to the garden with them. A few minutes peace. Coffee and a chat for we adults.
The garden’s great. Huge – you could swing a lion or a tiger in it. There’s a mound for jumping off. A trampoline. Worms. Leaves. Mud. A pile of rocks – these require moving and piling and moving back and piling again. And again. And again.
Best of all is, with the exception of just at the back door, everything and everywhere and everyone is visible from the kitchen. That’s good. You can spot Oisín before he gets to supplement his diet with nematodes and Seán before gets to supplement his little brother’s diet with nematodes. Nothing against nematodes you understand, it’s just that mothers are girls and girls don’t understand that everything must be tried at least once.
A whimper at the back door. Was he at you? I ask. Ah you com’on in and you can play with mammy, daddy and Primal instead. Daddy will tell Seán not to feed Oisín nematodes. He may have been a bit lost with that part but accepted it was all good and in his favour and calmed down immediately.
It’s okay, mammy, I explained. The appointment with the dietician didn’t go well but everything’s fine now.
Actually, where is the dietician? He was in “rock-land” just a second ago. And she slipped out to the garden.
Not a sign.
We didn’t believe her at first. The entire garden is enclosed and even has fine mesh to prevent the fence being climbed.
But she was right.
We called out. No answer. Then he wouldn’t answer if he was playing hiding.
There was no where to hide under, behind or inside. He was gone.
The panic built as we rushed through the house and out the front door.
Not a sign. Daddy ran to the walkway that leads out of the estate onto the main road. Oisín squealed with delight in my arms as I clambered over neighbours’ walls and ran through back gardens. Mammy hovered near the house in case he showed up or some neighbour bought him back.
I’m sure the same thoughts were running though their heads as mine. He could not have gotten out. The place is like Alcatraz-for-kids. He would have needed help from an adult. The rest didn’t bear thinking about but we thought about it anyway. No! No, that didn’t happen. He’d found something to pull close to the fence and climb on to slip over. But there wasn’t anything – I looked back at the house and there wasn’t.
It seemed like hours. Of course it wasn’t. Less than five minutes had passed when we found him. Three houses away, on the opposite side of the estate, happily building a castle in sand their builders had tipped around the back.
Not to scare him, though I’m sure he sensed our nervousness, we coaxed him home with the promise of some biscuits. We were all having some.
Over a feast of chocolate digestives and yellow-juice he told us he climbed out. Still disbelieving we asked him to show us how.
The only section of fence without the fine mesh is over 2 metres high. That’s what he’d climbed using the cross members as hand and foot holds. The ground the far side is higher and he just let himself drop.
There would be a little chat that evening before TV-time when things had calmed about why little boys shouldn’t do what he did. And the following day there would be work done on the fence. (My suggestion of barbedwire won’t be implemented from what I understand). But right now there was a trip to The Playbarn for mammy and the boys, and a rugby game for daddy and Primal.
My nerves were shot on the drive home. I was like a kitten in sack who could hear water splashing. I’m still shaky.
Incredible! That boy is fearless, he’ll go places.
He did already.
Scary moments. I earned a few gray hairs that way in the past.
Now I want chicken-fish & yellow juice when I come back to Dublin.
Done deal! It’s my twist this time too remember.
ankle weights? probably cheaper than fencing.
Might get the same response as my barbedwire suggestion.
Jesus. Nothing is scarier than losing a child. It’s a cold sweat, stomach dropping, knee giving out kind of moment. It may take you days to recover the use of your legs.
I still use crutches.
I’m glad my legs are still weak – it stops me kicking myself for all the stupid things I (we) did in the panic. Like why did I not hand Oisín to his mum instead of hauling him around with me – it would have calmed her and I’d have travelled faster. And why did we spend so long in the garden staring at an empty space not believing he had gotten out. And why. And why.
The climbing bit is easy, it’s the dropping down bit without a care for getting back, that’s the never-take-your-eyes-off-him-for-a-moment issue.
That’s another thing that worried me later. If he’d come back he’d have been locked out. Not able to reach the door bell. Not strong enough for us to hear his knocks on the front doors or windows. He could have wandered off looking for a neighbour. And, for some reason, probably the nice weather, the estate was deserted.
So, I’m the only one who had to google nematodes.
Brilliant though. We lost our eldest @ 2:30 a.m. once, she was 18 months old. Sorta like your thoughts too, it took five minutes to locate her and she wasn’t in our home! Still can’t take eyes from her now @ 14.5.
Holy fek! At only 18 months! Scary at any time, but at that age, really scary.
@Primal Sneeze – You’re on! We’ll wait until you are over the hurdle practice.
Okay dokey.
No barbed wire?
Nope. And no to ankle weights too.
OH.MY.GAWD!
just reading this made my heart stop! xoxo
I think mine hasn’t restarted yet.
Our daughter used to love hiding on us in clothes shops at about the age of three……panic, asking the security staff to close the doors etc. we would then find her hiding in a rail of clothes. One day we decided to hide on her, while all the time keeping her in view……it never happened again.
Ah yep, a little taste of one’s own medicine works wonders.
Yeah, we found her in my mother in law’s house which is about 100m away, across a road. She found her way up upstairs to her Granny’s bed. Freaky really. I leave our front door open ( from the inside ), her granny’s garage door was miraculously open too. It was raining out but she was bone dry, I was drenched. And then she mentioned in her baby way, about the nice lady who helped her. I thought my heart would explode in panic for the five minutes we were looking.
So, yes, and treble yes to loosing your mind when a child goes missing. And yes to the incredulity and logical elimination of possibilities as to where Sean might have been. I looked all over the house first, before I woke herself. And yes to carrying around Oisin cause it made sense then. And yes to the abject fear and panic. There’s a green in front of our house and a lake. Oh God, it’s awful Primal. Pure awful. Good stuff outa you for finding him.
We’re sorta over it now. It took a while. You can remind Sean about it some day and maybe smile and have a pint on the strength it. He won’t understand though.
Your daughter had the whole Red Riding Hood thing going on there. Without the wolf thankfully.
Now that’s something I hadn’t thought of: Only 14 years to first (legal) pints. What age will I be then? Now I have a Desperados Waiting for a Train thing going on in my head. Freddie White version of course, not Guy Clark.
I’m so glad he was found safely. I can’t even imagine the terror – I get panicky when the dogs go runabout.
The dog never strays thankfully. If he does once he will keep doing it.
The wee man hasn’t repeated his fugitive thing so far. I hope he he’s learned not to.