My friend reached out to me. Her mom was in town. She wanted me to meet her. We made plans to go to dinner. It was lovely and fun. A few hours later we said our goodbyes.
I stopped to meet friends at a restaurant.
One of our fav musicians was playing.
A guy I’d recently dated reached out to me, and met me there. It was a relatively quiet evening. I barely drank and I wasn’t out late. The next day I couldn’t find my phone.
I was baffled.
I met two of my friends for brunch at the same restaurant. I wanted to see if my phone was there. It wasn’t. We remained out because I hoped to run into people whose phone numbers I didn’t have.
I wanted to see if they had my phone.
The time got away from me.
I was stressed. I spent all day looking for my phone. If ever there was a night I shouldn’t have misplaced my phone this was it.
It made no sense.
Unbeknownst to me my boys are lighting up the airwaves.
My oldest son and his wife are out of town for the weekend. They’ve been trying to reach me unsuccessfully. They call my middle son and share their worries.
“I think Mom is dead,” says my oldest son. “I can’t reach her. We’ve been trying to reach her for hours. Something isn’t right. It’s my birthday and she still hasn’t called me.”
It seems he and his wife have been running through treacherous scenarios for more than an hour before they succumb, and call his brother. My youngest son is unaware since he lives out of state.
My middle son calls my neighbor.
She’s been away for the weekend, and has just landed back in town. She tells him she has no idea where I could be. This only heightens their anxiety.
My son makes his way to my apartment building.
He may, or may not have been slightly hysterical with the new concierge.
“I need to get into my Mom’s apartment,” he says.
She won’t let him in.
He’s so upset he’s forgotten the keys he has to my place.
“You have to let me in,” he says. “Or I’m going to file a missing persons report. We think my Mother suffered a medical emergency. Something isn’t right. It’s my brother’s birthday and she hasn’t called him, and we can’t reach her.”
One of the people in the office escorted him to my apartment.
He’s got my older son and his wife on the phone as he moves from room to room.
He expects to find me lying on the floor. He’s giving them a play by play. He even looks under my bed. (Thanks for thinking I could actually fit this body under my bed).
He’s extremely upset but relieved to find me absent from my apartment.
A few minutes later, he walks into the restaurant attached to my building.
“Where have you been?” he demands. “We thought you were dead.”
“What?!” I say.
“It’s my brother’s birthday,” he says. “And you didn’t call him, and no one has been able to reach you all day.”
“It’s 5 p.m.,” I say. “It’s not midnight on his birthday. I lost my phone and I’ve been trying to find it. I probably should’ve borrowed a phone to call him but I didn’t think I would still be trying to locate my phone this late into the day.”
I use his phone to call my oldest son.
You gotta love that he can laugh about it.
He’s relieved.
My middle son is still traumatized as he’s the one who did the wellness check. He sits with me while I order him a few things, and attempt to talk him down.
“To be fair,” he says. “If it was any other day you would have been in that apartment for days, and no one would’ve been looking for you. But it was his birthday.”
Finally, his humor is bubbling to the surface.
While this may seem like somewhat of a big reaction, my friends understand it. I didn’t make a fuss of my children’s birthdays, I went over the top.
I would decorate our kitchen.
I would give them ice cream for breakfast, and hide their birthday presents all over the house. I wanted them to experience an entire day of love, not just a moment.
They would open a few presents in the morning.
They would go to school.
They would come home from school.
They would search for a few more presents while we told them whether they were getting hot or colder. We would have a birthday dinner, and they would find the remainder of their gifts.
It began one year when my sister gave her kids ice cream for breakfast.
My friend told me she hid her kids’ birthday presents.
I loved both of those birthday ideas so I combined them, and made it an entire day event. I preferred to spoil my kids on their special day rather than buy them things monthly.
Once they left for college, I called them early in the morning.
I was carrying on a tradition my own mother had set. She wanted to be the first to wish us happy birthday. Even in college, she would wake me up at 6 a.m.
It made me smile.
Thus, 5 p.m. with no birthday call was a departure from their mother.
The mom who adores holidays in childlike fashion.
We can laugh about it now.
Thankfully, this is what we do, we find the humor.
But it does illustrate the degree of trauma we experienced as a family in an overly long, and abusive divorce. There was a massive degree of unpredictability in our lives.
The stress I endured caused a health issue.
We also suffered an unimaginable tragedy right before I left my husband.
I understand why they were stressed.
And my phone?
It turns out my friend’s husband took my phone. His wife has a habit of forgetting her phone. Her case is similar to mine. He saw it and thought that she had left without it.
The next day they didn’t know whose phone he’d absconded with.
Until my friend told them I was looking for my phone.
Mystery solved.
But note to a mother’s self: If you lose your phone…borrow a phone to call your child on their birthday…first. Search for the phone later.
Some stories you can’t make up.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Paul Richards on Unsplash
