I'm a good mother. Everybody tells me that... my family, my friends, acquaintances; everyone! They keep praising me for the way I have raised my kids; how well-behaved they are, how smart, how well they do at school and how I break my back trying to bring out their creative talents. And believe me, all this others tell me so I'm not really blowing my own trumpet. But we all know that nothing is perfect (as much as I'd want it to be), and neither am I :(
I keep losing my kids, literally. One kid I lost twice *hangs her head in shame*. And the worst part is that I always lose them when I'm on a holiday. Sometimes I take holidays on my own, just me and the kids. And even when all four of us travel together, if I go out for a bit on my own, I usually take the kids with me, unless I'm taking a late night trip to a nearby mall or a local market, which is when my husband kindly babysits them. And they are good kids I tell you; it's not as if they would disobey me or anything so the story or rather the stories of me losing them are quite funny. In my defence, all three times it happened because my kids wandered off; well actually twice my little one wandered off and my daughter just lost her way.
About five years ago I took a trip to Malaysia for the first time. I stayed with friends and had a ball of a time till the day we went to Sunway Lagoon. It was great fun. We decided to check out the mall later in the evening, which is where it happened. I wanted to check out some shops with my friend so I sent my five year old for a ride on these huge stuffed animals. I told the man in charge to keep my lil boy with him once he had taken two rounds and I'll come and get him in fifteen minutes. I explained my son also that mama will be back in no time and he was not to go anywhere and wait for me. I went off on the same floor with my daughter,my friend and her daughter who's my own daughter's age. I can swear that I came back within fifteen minutes if not before that. He was nowhere to be found. He was not on the over-sized hot pink feminine looking lion that I had put him on for a ride; he was not with the 'uncle' he was supposed to be standing with while he waited for mama; he was just nowhere in sight. I asked every man nearby if he had seen a five-year old but they shook their heads. The man in charge should NOT have been put in charge of my lil boy. My bad! I mean he was already in charge of soo many stuffed animal rides that looked as if they were going for a gender change. I looked everywhere, I didn't even have his picture on me to show anyone in case I needed to go to the authorities. We split in two teams, my daughter and I in one. It was the scariest thing I had ever experienced; I started imagining all sorts of awful things as I went through every shop and every stall right in the middle of the mall. My daughter and I both started crying uncontrollably. We just didn't now what to do. What had I done? I had lost my baby. Just then I saw a flash of orange about twenty thirty feet away. I knew then. It was him. I rushed to catch that little orange thing as fast as I could. There he was, roaming around looking for mama, wearing the bright orange button-down shirt with crabs all over it that he insisted on buying two days back and I had to give in, as much as I hated it and disagreed with my son's fashion sense; because my five-year old wouldn't let go of it. I hugged him, squashed him and showered him with kisses till he secretly started wishing he hadn't been found by his weirdo of a mother. And I still have that bright orange shirt in my keepsake box to remind me how it saved both me and my son...
Please check tomorrow fr the second part of this post. After all I did lose him twice, not to mention my daughter whom I lost as well; but only once, I promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment