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You know those night­mares we get from time to time where some­thing bad is hap­pen­ing and no mat­ter how loud you scream, it just doesn’t seem loud enough. No mat­ter how hard you try to run, your legs just won’t move.  Yes­ter­day I expe­ri­enced that nightmare…in real life.

We were at Gremlin’s foot­ball prac­tice when a huge rain storm swooped in out of no where.  Due to some scary expe­ri­ences with hail and tor­nado storms, Grem­lin freaks out at sprin­kles! I yelled for him to “Come here!” and quickly tried to get our stuff together and help other fam­i­lies get their belong­ings.  I yelled for my old­est to head for the car and spun around to grab Grem­lin by the hand to make our mad dash. The hand didn’t feel right. It wasn’t him. It was another lit­tle boy.  I quickly looked around and Grem­lin was no where to be found.  J was in an intense con­ver­sa­tion with the coach and a down­pour was not going to deter him.

I took off with Old­man toward the park­ing lot with a grow­ing fear in my heart. We had a long way to go as the foot­ball field is behind all the soc­cer fields and it was rain­ing so hard it was dif­fi­cult to see.  I had one more soc­cer field to cross when I saw him.  He was cry­ing hys­ter­i­cally try­ing to find us and the car. He was run­ning all over the park­ing lot and cars were dri­ving crazy try­ing to get home.  We live in the heart of farm­land so EVERYONE dri­ves trucks.

I freaked.

I started scream­ing his name over and over. He couldn’t hear me.

I was run­ning with every­thing in me, but my legs felt like rub­ber and just wouldn’t dig in and move it.

I saw one truck barely miss him.  Then another.

I’m not sure how he did it, but my 9 year old kicked it into gear and passed me run­ning for his brother.

A truck about clipped him on the leg.

I reached them just as Old­man brought him out of the park­ing lot with his arms wrapped around him.

I was so mad. Mad at myself for not turn­ing into Won­der Woman and com­ing to his res­cue.  Mad that as many times as I’ve tried to teach him what to do in case of an emer­gency he just won’t do it. Mad that I can’t take his white-knuckle fear of rain away. Mad that I came too close to los­ing him over a stu­pid reason.

Also mad, that dur­ing all this J was STILL talk­ing to the coach over a dumb mis­un­der­stand­ing and he was obliv­i­ous to what was going on! He wasn’t ‘there’ for Grem­lin or for me.  Is it his fault? No.  But this mama bear is furious.

There have been many days as a mother that one of my chil­dren did some­thing to scare me to death.  You know, the typ­i­cal falling out of a tree and land­ing hard, bike wreck, scooter flip, etc. But yes­ter­day Grem­lin scared me so bad I’m still shak­ing in anger.

And I don’t know what to do with it. I should feel blessed that noth­ing did hap­pen, but I’m not there yet.