“Mommy, where’s my Baby?”
Those few words incited panic tonight as Sam and I were driving home from school. We had stopped at the grocery before heading home, and it was a madhouse – I work in a college town and why it didn’t occur to me that going to the store there on the first night the kids were back after winter break might not be a great plan is beyond me. In any case, I remembered Sam and me making the decision that he could bring Baby – his beloved teddy bear – into the store, but after the chaos that was shopping, that’s the last I could remember.
We were 20 minutes from there, and another 20 minutes from home, when Sam realized Baby was missing. I immediately pulled over and searched for him – stopping on the side of a two-lane highway in the dark was also a brilliant idea, I was full of them tonight – to no avail. I got back on the road and drove a little further until I came to a place where I could safely stop, and where I could turn around, if necessary.
It was necessary. Baby was nowhere to be found. I called Andy and told him we were headed back to Oxford on a Baby rescue mission. He wished me well and started praying to Saint… um…. whichever one is the patron saint of lost things.
I tried not to panic.
It sounds perfectly ridiculous, I know – a little teddy bear that is old and worn out and probably carrying at least three strains of the flu virus – but my heart was racing.
Sam kept saying things like “I don’t love any of my other stuffed animals the way I love Baby.” He asked me what we were going to do if we couldn’t find him.
When Sam started singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” I had to hold back tears.
We finally got back to the grocery store and pulled in the same parking spot we had been in before. Baby wasn’t there, so our next stop was the cart corral.
*cue the Hallelujah chorus*
There, laying on the ground beside the carts, was Baby, just as we’d left him. (No really. That’s what he looked like when Sam dropped him. He was already that dirty.)
Can’t you just see the relief and joy in Sam’s face?
I looked the same way, I’m sure. We were both so happy.
This was the closest call in three-plus years of close Baby-losing calls.
He’s is “just” a teddy bear, but Sam would have been so devastated to have lost him, and I would have been so devastated for Sam.
I just don’t want my baby to hurt.
There is no such things a ‘just a teddy bear’, I still have mine, and I’m 60!
UP
OH MY GOSH! My heart was racing. Seriously, what does that say about my life? This was uber-stressful to read! Oh, wait, maybe it says I love Sam! So glad BABY is safe!!
You are a great mother! So happy it turned out okay.
OMG…this was very stressful to just read about this story. I am so happy Baby was returned. (And that a hazmat security team wasn’t called in and surrounded that filthy bear when you and Sammy drove back to the parking lot. That would have been traumatic for Baseball Sammy at such a young age.) I know how Baseball Sammy loves his Baby. Actually, Baseball Sammy’s love for Baby and the trials and travails you all have been thru with him is exactly what inspired us to commission Tom’s mom to make an exact replica of “Banks”, Gavin’s blanket, before we got in a bad situation. In fact, we are trading them out almost daily so they have the same wear and tear so we can keep up the clever ruse that there is only one Banks. We are learning from those who have went before us.
What a sweetie! “You’ve got a friend in me” from the back seat definitely would have pushed me over the edge.
P.S. Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. I imagine my grandmother is smiling in heaven that I remember this information.
Ufff! 🙂 I know that feeling – my little ones both have their special toys and as I don’t have 4 pairs of eyes I tend to put them in different places or just, well, lose them unintentionally…Glad to know he was still there!
In Child Development class at Miami University, Baby would have been called a “transitional object.” LOL A flashback to 1983. So glad he got his baby back!
Nice work. I hope that, if my babies have a transitional object, I’ll remember how much I lived mine. I still remember crying and crying the times that I thought I lost it. It wasn’t just a dog to me. Still have him, too.
My daughter has a….uuummmm…”blanket” called “B” that she ADORES!!!!! It used to be a bright pink waffle weave receiving blanket – now – not so much. (It’s about 10 shades of dirt brown and gray.) She started carrying it around when she was 14 months old and now she’s 8 and can’t go to sleep without it. It’s absolutely disgusting and filthy and germ ridden, but she loves it with all her heart and sobs when a piece falls off. It’s just shreds of blanket and all the thread it’s been repaired with over the years and I always tell her all that’s holding it together anymore is dirt and love!
I’m so glad he found him. My son also has a teddy bear named Baby and I could not imagine how devastated he would be if he lost him. For the last few years I have put a stop to him taking him out of the house. I won’t lie I would be super sad also if he ever lost him. He smells exactly how my son smelled when he was a baby. Nothing like the smell of baby sweat. lol