Once, when Nate was about 5, I tripped while we were disembarking a city bus. As I regained my composure, Nate got ahead of me and got off the bus. The bus door closed and drove away. I was still on the bus, Nate was not. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, Nate was safe until I (and a bunch of screaming passengers) convinced an unforgiving bus driver to stop before the next marked stop and I could run the 4 blocks to get him.
I am a careful mom, I am an observant mom, It was an unexpected accident. Thank God it didn’t get media coverage like the gorilla kid and the lego kid, because according to most of the internet, I would have been deemed a neglectful mother without any consideration to the circumstances.
We’ve all had one terrible moment as parents, most of the time it’s small – like losing track of your kid for half a minute in a store; when your heart skips a beat until you see or hear them – but it could easily turn into something bigger in the blink of an eye. Let’s stop judging parents based on their one terrible moment.
