Last night our family saw the last of this year's subscription shows at the Children's Theatre Company, located in a wing of the huge Minneapolis Institute of Arts building. We were heading down the stairs and out the door with the crowd, when Mark asked, "Where's Milo?" and we looked and he was nowhere.
We stood still for a moment, listened, scanned, while parents and children streamed past us through the main lobby, some heading out one set of doors and some out the other. "You take Oscar, I'll go this way," Mark said, scooping up Mary Jane and pushing through the set that leads to the courtyard and then to the parking garage.
Oscar grabbed my hand. His voice was thin and panicky. "Mom! Mom! Let's look for him! Hurry!"
I walked out the doors that led to the street — it had only been a few seconds since we missed him. Oscar began calling urgently for his brother. I looked and listened. I pictured him discovering he wasn't with us. If he was out here he'd be darting around looking. Or someone might have noticed him and stopped to ask if he needed help. I didn't see a little boy in a dark green fleece darting around. I didn't see any grownups standing up straight and scanning the crowd looking for a child's parents. He hadn't gone this way, most likely. I wasn't worried yet; I wouldn't be worried till I'd gone back up the stairs to the theater lobby. Oscar was starting to cry and clutching my hand tightly. "Let's go back in and look," I said, and we pushed back in through the doors — the crowd was thinning by now — back through another set of doors to where the stairs were, and as we started up the stairs there was Milo, running down the stairs all by himself, beaming with relief to see us.
"Oh Mama I missed you so much," he called up to me, wrapping his arms around my leg.
"I missed you too," I said and hugged him. While I was bent over next to him I asked, "What happened? How did you lose us?"
"I thought I was with my mama and daddy," he said, "but then I looked up and I was with another family."
"Well — what did you do next?"
"I went upstairs to look for you and I looked and looked. And then I went down the stairs to look for you."
"Where were you going to go when you got downstairs?"
"Oh, I don't know," he said, "maybe the parking lot."
Hoo boy. "Let's go find Dad," I said.
We turned and started walking together towards the van. I worked on fishing my phone out of my purse while with the corner of my eye I watched Oscar sling an arm around his brother's shoulder and tell him, "Milo, I missed you so much, I was so worried that we lost you and wouldn't ever find you again." And Milo turned and hugged him with both arms and told him, "I missed you too. I love you."
It took a couple of calls before we got Mark (the ringer was off — we'd just been to a play after all) and were reunited outside the parking garage. Milo started speaking sternly to Milo about wandering off but I stopped him. It really could have happened to any child. "We need to go over the what-do-you-do-when-you're-lost scenario, that's what we need to do," I told him, and when he heard about "I don't know, maybe the parking lot," he didn't argue.
So we went out for ice cream instead and had a serious talk about Sitting Still And Thinking For A Few Minutes and Asking For Help From A Lady Who Is Working. Oscar cried because he discovered he didn't like passionfruit after he had taken one bite of his cone, and Mark bought him a second ice cream cone (coffee banana — he liked that, go figure). I ate the passionfruit ice cream and Mary Jane ate the coconut ice cream we were supposed to be sharing. Milo fell asleep in the car on the way home and was carried to bed. So… not at all a bad end to an evening with a bit of a detour in the middle.
Other than that, incidentally, everyone liked the play.
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