That moment
when you can’t see your kids.
No, you definitely cannot see your kids.
FUCK
Your heart stops.
Your rational brain weakly attempts to take charge but in a split second the primal brain- existing precisely for this situation (!) kicks in. Your heart starts again as if by a defibrillator, blood rushes to your legs and you find yourself sprinting- to where you last saw them, where you’ve been, around the immediate area. You hear yourself shouting, a hard, loud sound coming out of you desperate for it to draw your beloved children back to you. But your voice is instantly swept away by the roar of the sea. You scan the water, computing every blonde head you see, no, no NOOOOO.
FUCK
The signora who was next to you on the beach joins the search, while the stupid, fat, old life guard observes without reaction, from his high ‘watch’ as this deranged woman tears around in front of him grappling at the air as if trying to conjure up her kids from the sand.
It’s been nearly 4 minutes. Every possible scenario and more scream through your head, the worst ones most vividly. Every second counts. 4m 10s……4m 25s…..
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUUUUCK
You race back to where they should have been, again, then back along the beach.
And there are your two children, looking slightly baffled as another, more elderly signora has her arm wrapped around them, ushering them gently towards me, their mother.
The older child is covered with chocolate ice cream, in another life you’d laugh and scurry him off to the sea to wash off. In this life you fall upon them both, enveloping them in your arms, taking big, insatiable gulps of the smell of their skin, sobbing wretchedly.
’Where the fuck were you, where the fuck did you go?’ (over this summer we’ve learnt that swearing is ok for adults and not ok for kids).
I receive a perfectly reasonable explanation from the big one, a totally unfazed glance from the small one.
I thank the kind signore and God, but in my post-adrenalin-surge-slump cannot muster the energy to glare at the useless lifeguard. What does it matter now anyway.
My darling children are back in my arms.