Losing Camille

Last night Brent and I planned to go out to celebrate another year down. After the usual kid's date night fare of mac and cheese, Brent told me he was going to ride down to the corner store and get them each a $.25 ice cream bars. The corner store is 4 blocks away- 2 blocks north, then another 2 blocks east. I heard some of the kids asking to go on my way upstairs to get ready for our date.

In a couple minutes the house got quiet and Caroline came up to join me. Ten or 15 minutes went by and we heard them come home. As they came in I saw Kennon and Savannah but NO 6 year old Camille.

"Where's Camille?" I said.

"Huh? Camille didn't come with us," they both said while I insisted in an increasing panic that "Yes she did, because she definitely hadn't been here with me!"

I hollered out at Brent who was putting bikes away the same question, "Where's Camille!!!!"

He didn't know. She had been in the living room when he left.

Ten seconds after that we had already interrogated the neighborhood and heard from a 12 year old boy that he had seen her race off toward the river, in the opposite direction of the store, right after they had left. ( Apparently they had pedaled in that direction initially to turn around.)

So Brent raced off down the block on his bike, toward the busy road that runs along 190. He was relatively calm, compared to my hysteria, figuring he would find her somewhere between there and the store. He found her a couple blocks later racing back home headed straight for him. She was smiling and hollering, "I went all the way to the corner store all by myself! Where were you?"

In the course of the rigorous pedaling in the cold wind, a large drop of water had begun descending out of her father's eye. As soon as Camille got close enough to see her "Crying" Father, obviously overcome to tears, who was hollering out, "Camille, we were so worried about you!", she immediately stopped bragging about her incredible journey, and began bawling.

This is when I came on the scene, driving up in the van. I picked her up and brought her home while she cried and cried. She had been "Jumped on by a big dog, and Why did Dad leave her?, and Why weren't they at the store when she got there?".

Finally she stopped crying and talking so I could explain to her to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! And then I explained to my husband to PLEASE tell me next time which children he was taking so I knew which children I was keeping.

None of my other children would've have ever done this, though I should've known this was coming with this girl. I lost her twice during the airport when she disappeared out of the bathroom as soon as she was done even though the rest of us were still in there. I couldn't get through to her then but maybe Dad's "tears" will do the trick.

We still went on the date and tried out a new restaurant, "Taste of Thai" on Hertel avenue. We shared the "Pud Thai" dish. I didn't want to blow my diet the first couple days and figured that sharing was a good way to at least portion control, since I was sure they weren't whole wheat noodles, and the sauce was definitely sweet. It was yummy food but then I have never tasted any Thai food that I didn't love. The service and presentation were also excellent. I told the waiter we would definitely be back. He said, "Next time order more food." What he meant was SPEND more then $11 dollars. Everyone around us had multiple dishes, and all were sipping something considerably more expensive than lemon water. But we left him a $4 tip, and how can he complain about that on a slow Thursday evening.

A couple blocks down on Hertel we joined friends at Cafe Allegro to listen to Kristen and Jonas perform. Jonas is a dental student and Kristen is a classmates wife and also my friend. They really are talented, I love the music, and we would never be going out to listen to music at night with friends if it weren't for them. We haven't ever participated in the "hanging out on the town scene" before so it is nice to have a reason to go chill at a cafe and enjoy their wonderful talent. So thanks, guys and keep it up. But stay out of the bars. We like the cafe gigs best so we can bring our baby.