Sky Blue: Of Dust and Miracles

          This entire entry is based on a DREAM - if you read it

          and don't know it's a DREAM, you might think I've lost

          it.  Never fear - I am whole, healthy, and very, very 

         well!  But here is my disclaimer:  I woke in a foggy panic 

         this morning at 5:58 a.m.  I had a dream that left me 

         shaken and a bit undone.  I ended up writing it all down

         to process it.  It may just become part of my story . . .

It is mid-morning, 9:00 or 9:30, and Jeff and I are at a coffee shop having coffee and waiting for his parents to show up to have breakfast.  But all of a sudden, I realize I do not know for certain where Sage is. Now, 99.9% of the time, a mom knows exactly where her kids are. But on this crazy morning, it was as if I had relinquished all responsibility for Sage to someone else (one of her pre-school teachers comes to mind. In the dream though, the schools keep getting jumbled, bouncing at first between her sweet little pre-school and the equally lovely, parochial school she attends now . . . )

What I knew was that I had not been the one to drop her off at school and send her safely into her day with an “I love you” and “Have a great day!” and a final, “I’ll see you at 3:15!” like we usually do.  No, this morning, I didn’t even think about Sage until 9 or 9:30 and then, it hit me like a freight train.  I said to Jeff, “Where is Sage?”  And he didn’t seem too worried or concerned – his typical M.O.  Panic and anxiety in times of stress, unfortunately, is mine . . .

I decided to go call the school to make sure she was there.  And the office person/roll taker lady says after checking the homeroom roll sheets, “No, she was marked AB from homeroom today . . .”   “Whaaaaaat???” my mind screams.  “What the hell is going on?” I wonder. “And where is Sage???”  Sage. Sage. Sage.

Jeff’s parents show up for breakfast and I hide behind dark sunglasses so they don’t see my tear-stained face and near-hysteria.  For some reason, I don’t want them to know I’m crazy and perhaps unfit as the mother of their granddaughter.  Minimally, I know I can’t deal with Jeff’s judgment, or theirs, and I tell Jeff I need to go look for Sage.  Check at the school.  “She has to be there, right?” I plead to him . . . and God.

God. God. God. Help me God. I don’t know where exactly my daughter is, with whom, if she’s missing or with someone Bad/Awful/Can’t Let My Mind Go There . . . I’m wondering what Sage is thinking, wherever she is. That I’ve forgotten her . . . don’t care (never, never, never) . . . would leave her to the elements or whomever.  How did I slip? Forget? Settle into some complacent, fake certainty that all was O.K. this morning?  How could I just drink my coffee and not know???

I wonder, “Is it like the father that heads hurriedly off to work on an early summer morning and forgets his sleeping infant in the back seat?  The baby he was supposed to drop off at daycare for his tired wife, only to realize half-way through the day, he had forgotten???”  And then, to find out horribly – desperately – knife through the chest painfully – that he’s left his child in the car.  With the windows all rolled tightly up.  In the dead heat of a scorching summer.  Realizing his child has died at his hands. His carelessness.  Never to recover.  The disbelief and guilt, as crushingly oppressive as the heat, leave no room for escape. He will never drink his morning coffee easily again.

My morning coffee is about to come up.  This is how I feel in this dream (dream, dream, dream). I had forgotten my child – yes, forgotten – my sweet, sweet girl. And now, any horrible, terrible bad thing could be waiting for her or me to meet it.

I leave Jeff and his parents with a squeal of my tires to go to the school and see for myself that she is not there.  Not possible, I tell myself.  I can picture her there . . . Is she really not there? Where could she be? I picture her somewhere, standing, waiting for me, tears down her cheeks, eyes big and wondering. Full of sadness and feeling forgotten.

My stomach - a bottomless ache – is ready to turn inside itself and swallow me whole. The fear and panic race around in circles deep in my gut as a one-sided conversation ricochets through my brain. “Sage, where are you? I will find you. I’m coming right now.  Don’t give up on me.  Never give up on me. I am right around the corner.  There are no bad men.  Please God, let that be true.” 

 Another image comes to me and I see Sage safely tucked away.  She is sitting – happily creating – at her desk at school.  Right this minute she is drawing a picture of her family.  She puts smiles on each of the faces – Mom, Dad, Sage and Taggart.  We are happy. We are whole. Sage is nonplussed by the utter starkness of my fear, the empty black hole of my not knowing where she is doesn’t scratch her innocent surface.  She takes a purple crayon and writes on her picture “I am thankful for my family”.

I am thankful for the imagined faith I bestow her as I slam the car into park and run past another mother exiting the school.  I push through the open door, bypassing the check-in at the front office, and head straight through the double-doors that lead to Sage’s classroom. Sunlight is pouring into the hall from the courtyard windows.  This smells like a school – disinfected and dusty. This looks like a school – orderly lockers, empty hallway, kids hard at work behind closed doors. Business as usual, I think (hope) to myself.  And as I reach Sage’s classroom, fourth wooden door on the right-hand side between all the red lockers, I take the deepest breath I can and peek in through the long, rectangular window.

I find her immediately!  Yes!  There she sits!!! My blue-eyed girl! Head down, concentrating on her picture, ankles crossed, blonde hair tucked behind one ear; she never had a single worry.  Didn’t know one bit of my angst.  I could faint from the relief flooding through my veins.  The great gratitude I am overcome with for the still-life in front of me.  Norman Rockwell’s got nothing on this image in front of me.  My daughter is safe, she is happy, she is whole; a faint smiles crosses her face as she colors the sky blue.

I, on the other hand, am a fragmented mess of a mom. Undone first by my fear and panic, now I am lost in a tsunami of relief and the rightfulness of my daughter doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing, exactly where she is meant to be.  I begin to sob and quietly turn and walk down the hall from where I came only moments ago.  My whole world is different. I see the dust particles in the bright sunlight, floating, dancing, hanging in mid-air.

I’m not Catholic and I don’t typically say the “Lord's Prayer” unless I’m instructed to, but this morning it bubbles up, unbidden.

“Our Father, who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

On Earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil;

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.”

With that, I drop to my knees, no longer able to support the weight of my gratitude and relief.  A deep peace flows through me and I let go of all fear, doubt, anxiety, blame and judgment in that empty, warm, sunny hallway.  I breathe in the forgiveness, humility and stillness that are now mine. A clear thought – a complete sentence – settles over me. “I am thankful for my family”.  This has never been more true.

With my disheveled world now more righted, I pull myself up and walk back through the double-doors; past the chapel.  I head back out into my day, firm in my conviction that all is well.