I’m one year postpartum and I’m pulling my hair out. Literally. It’s coming out in little clumps in the shower. I’m finding strands trapped in the clutches of my baby’s chubby little fingers. It’s gathers in the corners of our bathroom like tumble weeds. Hair loss is one of the stranger trademarks of the hormonal postpartum body. But more on that in a minute. First, another story about losing things.
This past Monday morning, our five year-old (who I will now refer to as "Five" because #easier) gave us probably one of the biggest scares of our short lives together. Around our usual wake up time, my husband went to rouse him only to discover that he wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t in our bed. He wasn’t in any of the beds. Or any of the closets. He wasn’t anywhere in the basement. Or under the dining room table, his usual go-to spot when he wants to avoid any sort of commitment. He wasn’t in the fridge either (yes, we looked in the fridge). And he wasn’t in the garage. We ransacked the place like junkie night prowlers. It was if he had literally vanished into thin air a la The Leftovers. It was like we had lost him.
Instead of taking a moment to get ahold of ourselves and rationally reassure each other that we were being ridiculous and that our child HAD to be around here somewhere, my husband and I froze in the hallway and stared wide eyed at each other while our 1 year-old babbled happily—and sort of creepily, given the building tension—in his high chair. We both knew what the other was thinking: the worst. And we didn’t like it. Plus, we are so very tired in the mornings. Like pour the coffee in the cereal bowl, dump the milk in the coffee maker kind of tired. Very few synapses fire rapidly on a regular Monday morning, let alone one in which you’ve lost one of your two children.
So yes, this is fact: I’ve binged one too many true crime stories. Also fact: it’s terrifying when your child is not exactly where you expect him to be, even for a minute. So all the irrational yet almost plausible thoughts started racing through my half asleep brain. Did he sleep walk out into the night and then get lost or picked up by some old creep who has now locked and chained him in their dingy basement? Did that weird guy from the corner store come in here and kidnap him while I was stress dreaming? Is this the rapture? And if so, are they coming for me next?
“How does a child just…DISAPPEAR?” I demanded of the universe, the only likely witness at this point. I fast walked into Five’s room, whipped the comforter off his bed and threw open the closet door, as if we could have missed him when we went through these motions just a hot second ago. I hoped I was having one of those really real dreams where you wake up and are surprised to find yourself in bed instead of in a work meeting without your pants on. (Don’t act like this has never happened to you.) Without taking too much time to ponder the complex possibilities and implications of this dream theory, I exited Five’s room and resumed the position of staring blankly at my husband, who had not moved from his own frozen stance. We were like two statues in a B-grade museum entitled, “Scantily clad Mother and Father scared shitless in hallway.”
And then, just as I was about to succumb to uttering that dreaded 3-number command to my stony-faced spouse, a tiny voice broke through the escalating panic. “I’m not disappeared, mom. I’m right here.”
My heart dropped from my throat like the ball on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve as our little Five crept out from a nest of blankets and pillows in small crack of space between the couch and the wall of our living room because of course he did. That was the one and only place, aside from the inside the fucking mailbox, that we did not look.
He claimed he didn’t hear us calling for him. He claimed he had been sleeping. On the hardwood floor. By the air vent. He claimed he didn’t hear any of the “bad words” that had been flying out of my mouth like verbal vomit for the last I don’t even know how many minutes while we had been turning the house upside down. But I was so happy to hear his little voice and see his cute little person creep toward me in his cute little pajamas I didn’t even care whether he was telling the truth or not. I just hugged him and told him how scared we were when we couldn’t find him. He said he’d never, ever do it again. Whatever “it” was in his little brain was sort of unclear. But one thing was for sure: this debacle had cost us some serious getting ready time. We had showers to take, schools to attend and diapers to change. And thus we were shoved back into our morning routine like nothing had ever happened. Cue the coffee vodka. Five was almost lost and definitely now found.
This brings me back to the hair loss, the thing that I initially started writing this post about…about how it’s another one of those post-pregnancy things that nobody really talks to you or prepares you for, especially when it happens literally a complete year after giving birth. But then again, nobody really talks to you or prepares you for quasi losing your kid five years after birth either. And that seemed like a more interesting story to tell. Or maybe it was just an experience I needed to document for emotional reasons, catharsis, if you will. And while I’d love to be astute enough to connect these two things and make some sort of grandiose, profound statement about the quirks of motherhood and loss or something, I got nothing. What can I say? It’s been a helluva week. I’m losing hair and I thought I almost lost my kid. Go easy on me.
What have you lost—or almost lost—and then found again? What's made your heart beat twice its healthy rhythm on a Monday morning? What's made your hair fall out? Take a load off, share a story. Hit me up on Instagram: @proudmutter.
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