Phew! It’s been a busy week; with a triumphant return to my home town, running into Mrs Ward (my former English teacher) and my father losing my son I’ve barely had time to breathe.
Yes, you read that correctly my father lost my son, in the Plaza in Palmerston North.
On Saturday I was sitting on the porch, musing how lovely it was that Dad and Dash were out driving tractors. I could hear the thrum of the old white John Deer as it went about its Saturday morning business. The weekend paper sprawled out before me, coffee in one hand, indepth editorial piece on ‘Jealous husband kills wife’ in the other.
Then the phone rang, I rasied my eyes, thought about getting up to answer it but Mum and Charlotte were inside and I was confident it wouldn’t be for me.
Back to the paper. Suddenly the front door flew open.
“Dad has lost Dash” Charlotte said in her schoolteacher voice.
My heart stopped.
“What? Where? Aren’t they out in the back paddock?”
“ No he took him into the Plaza and now he has lost him”
I kicked off my slippers, dragged on my boots and ran to the car.
Charlotte drove as I went into THE WORSE CASE SCENERIO mode. What if a creep as got him? How long has he been missing? What if he is on the road? I imagined dungeons, milk cartons…… a coffin.
Ross sat in the back and tried to calm me down. He talked about how most people are really kind; he reminded me that Dash knew his name and where he lived.
I tried to be light-hearted and ‘comedy brain’ even got a ten second window as we past the Cottage Cake kitchen on Pioneer Highway.
“We sailed half way around the world and now Dash goes missing in Palmerston North!” I half laughed half screamed.
But immediately after that traitors outburst I switched back into FULL SCALE TIGER MOTHER mode. Where was my SON?!
As Charlotte swung by the automatic (if I can get in, a child can get out) sliding doors to The Plaza, I performed a ‘dukes of hazard’ like leap and sprinted into the fluro horror of the shopping mall. It was packed; fat bogan’s scuffed past Shanton, teenage mums pushed toddlers, and everyone looked like potential kidnappers.
Despite my panic I clocked The Police were the playing ‘Sending out an SOS’ over the mall- wide sound system. But for the first time in my life I didn’t find the synchronicity funny.
I ran into the shop (my parents own the florist shop) and in a very calm voice said to Rebekah, “Where is my father?”
“I don’t know?” she said rubbing my arm.
I must have gone white.
“He’s got Dash Ange. It’s okay.”
You know when people talk about relief flooding through their bodies and then feeling like they want to collapse? Well that’s how I felt.
Turns out Dad had taken Dashkin into the Plaza, asked him to help unload the truck (he is 2 ¾) and then while he was talking to the florist Dash had disappeared.
Dad looked around, freaked out that “if he got into Farmers we’d never find him” and after calling security knew he had better alert the child’s mother.
In the time it took for me to get into town Dash had been spotted by a kindly security in a café sitting at a table singing ‘Haul on the bowline’ in a vigorous voice while fingering a bag of chocolates he had swiped from the counter.
Dad, now the crisis was averted decided ‘not to waste anymore time’ and went off to do flower deliveries. Leaving me, the lost child’s mother to crumple into the overly polished titles.
Needless to say once Dad and Dash arrived back at the farm he was put into the interrogation chair where he laughed manically and pulled out lines like “he can run bloody fast” and “ you can’t take your eyes of him for a moment”.
NO SHIT SHERLOCK.
At this point my mother reminded us all that this was the very same man, who while in sole charge of my youngest sister, had let her crawl down the driveway, across a busy road and towards the neighbours swimming pool before he noticed she was missing.
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