Blog Every Day in May: Day 31

Challenge Day 31: A vivid memory

Clearly - my most recent memory is somewhat overwhelmed with the events of the last week - but I want to devote a little more time to documenting that story correctly - so instead we are going to go a different direction - but first off - Hooray for me (and all of you out there!!) for actually blogging every day in May! I didn't know if I could do it and with the developing health issues and actually having Noah and being stuck in the hospital this week - I almost gave up so many times, but I really feel like I grew a lot this month and I'm proud I pulled this off! Anyway...


"G....come out! It's not funny!....G! GEEEE, WHERE ARE YOU?!!?!? The GAME IS OVER! COME OUT! It isn't funny! G, come out! G please, please, please come OUT! YOU WIN - just come out!" I was 8 or 9 years old and my little sister (G) was 3 or 4 - and she didn't start talking until she was 5. My parents had left me in charge while they were running an errand and my brother, one of his friends, my sister, and I all decided to play hide-n-seek. G was very good at hide-n-seek. We all hid and played several rounds of the game before we realized that G hadn't been out between the last few rounds and that no one had seen her in a while. We stopped the game and all started to call out for her and look for her throughout the house. We checked every closet and every hiding place we each knew. We looked for what seemed like forever calling out for her, after a while, I was screaming and crying out her name, begging her to just COME OUT! I began to panic - we were all panicking, but I, I was in charge, it was my responsibility to be keeping her(them) safe and she was gone. We searched the yard, yelling down the street, and went back to searching the house again. Keep in mind, this was the early 90s and there were no cell phones - there was no calling my parents and asking them to come home - there was simply searching and waiting for them to arrive to tell them that she was gone (or call the police - but I was too scared to do that). We started to re-search the house. Checking each place, looking for other smaller hiding places that we might have missed. The entire incident probably took place in 20-30 minutes - although it felt like hours years! We found her, eventually, in the back corner of a closet, on top of a four foot high pile of boxes squeezed into a 3-4 cubic foot space above the boxes under the shelf, behind several winter coats - in a space that none of us knew existed and wouldn't have expected her to be able to fit in even if we had known of it. And when we found her - she laughed - she had sat there, listening to the panic in all of our voices, listening to us cry and scream and yell, silently waiting to be found. I don't know that she would have ever come out. Unfortunately, this is not my only memory of panic - searching for G - in many different places - over the course of several years - with and without my parents - always with the added fear of knowing that she couldn't tell anyone her name or phone number or what her family looked like or anything else to help her to be found. Thankfully, she eventually overcame her mutism/speech delay and her penchant for hiding and torturing us all - because I'm sure her husband probably wouldn't appreciate either ;) - but I will forever remember those feelings or terror thinking that I had lost her forever. I love you, baby sister, but man, the scared 9-year-old big sister inside me still wants to beat you up for that!