Absconding II - Michael Sheridan

Max has gone to the garage. I’ve just looked in. He’s climbed into the car to play. I’ve decided to make the most of the opportunity to do a few minutes of something productive, and have gone back  to start the dishwasher. A few minutes later, I’m back down at the car. He isn’t here. He isn’t in the car. He isn’t anywhere in the garage. I think I hear a faint giggle, and check the car again. He really isn’t here. I must have imagined the giggle.

This is actually really unusual. As far I can tell, this is where he thinks all the best toys are: rakes, brooms, hoses, spray bottles and the car. Normally, he needs a while to get bored in here. Normally, I hear his footsteps if he leaves.

The first thing I do is check the back door, through the laundry. It’s the only way he can get out without using a key. It’s wide open. Normally, I hear this door too. Also strange.

Nevertheless, I don’t have time to dwell. I need to find him.

He’s has absconded before. Once, I lost him for two hours. I found him five hundred meters away, in another street, down the side of a house. He had their hose and was giving the house a good soaking. He was really happy because this hose had a long extension handle. He’d never seen that before. We had to get one ourselves after that.

So, right now, he has just gone missing again. I am calm about this. It has happened more times than I can count. It’s not usually as bad as that one time. If I am fast, I’ll find him within a few minutes. I know, if I am quick, that I just need to go look in all the normal places. Since that one time, I’ve learnt that there are only a few places he will go first. And so it’s never got as out of hand as it did then.

Almost always, he’s gone next door to the neighbour up to the hill on the left. Otherwise, it’s the one down on our other side, on the right. Rarely, he goes to the one across the street, but sometimes. I check all three. I’m really surprised he’s not at any of these given that it really still only is a few minutes.

I go quickly back through the house to make sure he isn’t inside. It is possible. It is worth ruling out.

But, he’s not.

Did I just hear another giggle in the garage? I check the garage and car again. Not Here!

One of the neighbours is outside. The lady down the hill. I had to look down the side of her house just now.

Ideally, I could tell her that he wandered off a few minutes ago, ask that she keeps an eye out for him, and phone me if he wanders past. Experience, from the other time, tells me that as soon as I give the vaguest suggestion that my child is lost, she will become hysterical. I need to know if she has seen him, but I don’t actually want to ask, but then I’d also need to explain why I just walked around her back yard. That one time I lost him, there was bedlam as soon as I asked someone, and she was at the centre of it. I didn’t need panic then and I don’t need it now.

Reluctantly, I ask, very calmly, knowing what happened the last time, and desperately trying to avoid a repeat, “Hi, just wondering if Max has come here in the last few minutes?”

That other time. Actually, about 2 years ago. He was three. He had been down the side of our house playing with the hose. He was soaked and came back to me. The routine here, was that he then got a warm bath and dry clothes, and we went on to do something else. That one time though was different. I opened the front door and sent him in, went down the back to turn the hose off, and then came back. Maybe this took twenty seconds. He didn’t go in. He was gone when I got back. That time I asked three different groups of neighbours, who were all outside, if he’d gone their way. And then there was chaos. What I was trying to establish was if he’d gone their way. What I got was, one guy getting on to bike so that he could cover more ground. Another doing a survey of every drain in the community, and the lady next door starting a door knock to muster support and get people out there to look. They really had the wrong end of it. He is three. He is in a residential area. It’s a spring afternoon. “Everyone knows him!”, was the voice shouting in my head. And he is obsessed with hoses. I knew he would be down the side of a house with a hose. I just needed to narrow it down a little. Which house is he hosing at? The best way to do this was to just have me walking around, and for anyone I saw to go on watch and phone me if he went past. With a search party out there were now three more things I had to do before I could get on with looking. I had to phone the police, or look like a bad parent for not doing so. I had to put something on the community Facebook to manage the horde. And I had to phone my wife at work so she didn’t hear it from anyone else first. I just wanted to be looking and catch up with him.

This time around it was the search coordinator neighbour that I now found myself needing to ask.

Very reluctantly.

She didn’t even need to start speaking for me to see on her face that we were about to go down the same path as before. No

w I need to reassure her to be calm, and just to phone me if she sees him. It wasn’t going to work. I also didn’t really want to unnecessarily waste time, because Max could in theory be anywhere. In fact, in theory, he could still be in the house somewhere, and I wasn’t convinced I’d checked that enough either.

“Please, just bring him back if he comes past. Don’t do anything else yet.” I walk back home.

As I wander through the garage, I swear I can hear a that faint giggle, but this is just my mind playing tricks. I look again. He is not in the garage. He is not in the car. I search the house properly. He is not in the house.

The only thing for it is to get in the car and go around the block. I’ll find him. It’s still only been a few minutes. Little rascal. There’s that giggle in the garage again, but the neighbours husband is in our driveway. I walk out. Oh my god! They’re searching already.

If I could imagine a situation where one in every ten people in the suburb was doing something useful, they would be sitting on their verandas ready to phone when he walked past. No one would be wading in a ditch to check through reeds. OMFG! This is premature.

I just tell him, calmly, “I’m going to drive around the block. He’ll turn up.” I am managing the mob again when I should be searching for my child.

Back in the garage, there’s a giggle again. He’s really not here. I sit down in the car and start it. There is an enormous bulge in the lining of the roof of the car. The giggling is really loud. It is definitely not my imagination. Max has pulled back the sunroof shade and is slung inside it. Having a great time. I leave Max where he is. He is clearly fine and will be for a few more minutes more. There is mayhem outside. I find the lady next door, who might as well have a bugle and be sounding a drill call.

“Hey. It’s okay. I found him. He’s hiding in the car.”

Inside, “Okay you!” He’s giggling more. “Out of there.” I move him to the seat and clip him in. Time for us to abscond and let the chaos in the street dissipate without us.

A few days later, Sunday, first thing in the morning, we’re at Baby Bunting to stock up on nappies, because I discovered last night there were two left in the whole house. They don’t open for ten minutes. Max wants to be unclipped so he can roam the car.

He is straight up into the sunroof. A few minutes later, there’s a rip, then a thump, then a howl as the tape on the roller comes free releasing the curtain. Max comes crashing down. That’s the end of that game. For a while.