I'm driving on the highway after dropping off my two daughters at Mom's Morning Out earlier today.
I pass the billboard, and today it is lit up.
My heart lurches.
I slow down and read the sign:
Child Abduction Model: silver Corolla License: XXX-XXXX
My lips literally go numb. And this isn't the first time I've seen this billboard announce a child has been abducted.
While visiting Newport, RI several months before, I attended a church service that had a guest speaker talk about human trafficking. Until then, in my mind human trafficking occurred in other countries or close to the border. Yes, I was naive. And then I learned that thousands (14,500 and more) individuals are brought into the country I live in (the U.S.) each year for human trafficking.
I came home to California and within a week I passed this billboard, lit up. Perhaps I had never noticed it before. Maybe I had driven by it watching my two girls in their car seats from the rear view mirror. But I noticed it now.
And I notice it today. It takes the entire strength of my mind not to let my body turn the car around and go pick up my daughters. Of course they are safe at their school. But my heart screams, "They are only safest with you, in your arms, not even five feet away from you."
The billboards, the threat of child abductions, the facts of human trafficking have turned me into a mother who always has to have an eye on my children. If we're at a store or a playground, I never let my girls go out of my vision.
Will they ever be able to ride their bikes around the block alone?
Will my daughters ever experience the freedom of walking to school with only their shadows trailing them and not me?
Will my girls ever discover the incredible secret world of playing in an abandoned field with only their imagination as their companion?
Probably not. And that breaks my heart. But how can I let them go when I know our world is full of predators? How could I go on living if they were abducted?
But the threat drains my daughters' freedom. My children aren't prisoners in their own home. We experience life in our community and in nature. But they are under my watchful eye at all times.
I see a kindergartener walking home from school, alone.
A toddler sits, alone, in a grocery cart in an aisle with not a single adult present.
Two young girls are playing hop-scotch at a playground with a swarm of men standing just 20 yards away.
I want to protect every child I see. Why can't I stop this fear from taking over my mind?
Probably because child abduction is my biggest fear.
When I became a mother for the first time, holding my child to my breast, smelling her sweet breath, I discovered my biggest fear: losing a child.
3 comments:
My only fear is loosing my son. But being brought up in Europe I am very relaxed about my son being independent. I probably shouldn't. OUr town is small and mostly military families so it gives me a sense of false security.
I blows my mind that anyone would ever take another persons child. WHY???
That's just terrible. My biggest fear is also that of losing my kids - whether to abduction or death. I can't bear to think of it. These poor children and the agony the families go through in losing them - horrible.
My mind can never wrap around the stories of child abduction and how a human is capable of it. The only thing I can think of is that the kidnapper is missing something it his/her brain, a part of the conscious mind.
Stasha, we too get a feeling of security, being military and being around other military families and I am grateful for it. I don't have to worry about my children when we're on base, it is like an extended family for us!
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