"My dear sweet angel"

You are never prepared for this phone call.

“Sir, this is Janice, from the school. Is your daughter at home today?”

“Morning,” I whisper in to wake her. Normally I'm a bit mean mean in the mornings, sometimes even singing Reveille as though it were boot camp. But not today – something in me prods me to be gentle.

“No...,” I answer carefully. “No, she left this morning.”

“Well, she was marked as absent, let me check with her class,” and the woman puts the phone on hold.

I look in the cupboard, and reach for the bread. Normally I cook her sausage strips for breakfast, but we don't have those right now. She waits patiently.

Terror is rapidly spreading through me – not at school! Then where? I quickly log in to MSN Messenger for a moment, where she would be if she had come home. She is not there. Terror isn't spreading now – I am terror, a breathing, heaving body of fear, reaching critical mass.

“Oh please, God... help me!” I pray silently – no psalms or rote prayers right now, I am begging - “Please.... protect my dear sweet angel!”

“I'm going. Bye Dad,” She says. I turn slightly, and smile, then glance at the clock – it is 7:04. “Bye!,” I answer.

After five minutes of terror, Janice from the school returns to the phone. “She's there,” she says, “But I didn't get to talk to her. She was marked as absent, I'm not sure why.” Terror becomes ecstasy.

“Oh thank you, thank you! You've made my day!” I answer.

I have a lot to be thankful for. And a lot to be thankful for. And a lot more to be thankful for. And now in a special way I can appreciate in a small way the empathy I need to show for those who get a phone call like this one, since this false alarm is only the barest hint of that one worst nightmare every parent nurses a dread of. Just this hint tells me how none of us can ever really know.

I pop open the My Documents folder on the computer. In there are dozens of wacky pictures, poems, and stories that she has composed. My eyes glance at one of them – a bitmap image titled, “A moose that is cool unlike my other.bmp” and I laugh. The sunny bright sparkles of a clear morning always blind me when they lance off the waters of the river of life.