Attention Wal-Mart Associates

I am going to vomit.

If I don't scream, rip my shirt, or run through a plate glass window, I am definitely going to vomit.

This is what I'm thinking as the kindly, weak-chined, bi-focaled woman across the counter says, "And what shoes is he wearing?"

Actually, I'm not thinking. I'm feeling things, like impending pain as I suck in air and hold my lungs perfectly still to lessen the stab between them. I'm controlling things, like the clenching of my fists and the winching of my face as I speak evenly and calmly. I am holding it all together... but I'm not thinking. Not thinking at all about how big a world it is, how dangerous a place, and how very small he is. I'm NOT thinking. And I have NO freakin' idea what shoes he's wearing.

My son is lost in Wal-Mart, and I am going to vomit.

The worst part -- sincerely worse than missing the shiny, full-of-bravado soul that is Miles -- is that I seem to have lost the ability to pray.

"Pray, already! Pray!" I command myself as I walk (run? lurch?) through women's clothing, choking back rage and terror and calling his name. I have been taught and I hold true that the smallest words spoken sincerely to Heaven can bend the very fabric of earth. Echoing in the ears of God even as they're spoken, they call down mysery and power and impact one's immediate circumstances in the most striking ways. I believe in prayer. But the words will not come.

I have no words.




I have lost the ability to talk to God.




This, my friends, is fear.



"Dear God," I say. (After a second? Three minutes? I don't know.) "Help me! Help me! Form my words." Over and over I repeat this three-word phrase that comes to me. Some lesser-panicked part of my mind wonders if even animals could express the same thought to the Divine. I think yes. After all, I am just an animal in this moment. A wounded mother being without her cub. No words, no words. Only feelings.

I can't say exactly what happened next.

I was working hard to ignore myself ("How big an idiot am I," I was thinking, "that I just forgot all those news stories about kidnapping and abuse and horrible, horrible deaths? How could I just tell him to stand by me and expect him to do it?!"), pacing and calling and logging details as a way to turn off the monologue.

I heard the announcement -- an "Adam Alert." I listened to the description and something clicked. My mind stopped spinning at the right number and the lock opened. Brown leather boots! Dammit! He's wearing brown leather boots!

I think I might have yelled this. (Years of upbringing tell me I yelled it without the "dammit," though I'm not sure.)

I registered, as if from a distance, two male employees guarding the exits, and the sight of them brought tears. Reassuring but alarming, they were, like the flaming sword bearers at the entrance to Eden.

I know a lot of employees began searching with me. Blue vests and out-of-focus faces. Names like Shirley.

I remember the sight of two abandoned carts by fabrics, and two older women pitching in to search.

So many women.... "They're mothers," I think. Because, before I became one myself, I would have have never abandoned a cart to go look for another woman's child.

And then a voice.

Just an ordinary, non-panicked, slightly embarrassed female voice. "I found him." Then, louder: "I found him!"

I felt like a runaway freight train brought to a dead stop. I almost couldn't accept any new thoughts, as if so much feeling had blown an emotional fuse. I couldn't decide whether to look up or down, so I bobbed my head both ways, trying to register some reassuring truth.

The Up View: Lots of eye make-up on a round face with heavy base. Red highlights, dark hair, red nails and tight jeans. A black fake leather purse. (It may sound like I'm about to judge, but I'm not. The parts aren't enough to sum this earthly angel.) It's a young woman standing beside a wall of blue jeans. She's holding back an armful of Lee's, and there, in The Down View, just where the denim is parted, sits my son. He's crouched and grinning because he has just won the World's Best Game of Hide-and-Seek.

"Oh, Miles."

"Oh." It comes out almost a whisper and I understand that this word is to be taken as another prayer: "Thank you."

"Thank you, God, for the horrible visions and the abject terror and the absolute, commonplace miracle of finding this child, safe and whole, playing Hide-And-Seek.

"For every mother whose heart has stopped, I say thanks. Thanks for creating us to care this much for one another. For every mother whose world has stopped, whose child has not been returned unharmed, I hurt. And I pray....."

I read somewhere that the truest prayers are as short as a breath: "Help me" and "Thank you." This week in Wal-Mart, I breathed both -- deeply. My seared, healing lungs will never forget.