The topic of the lecture was to find the good in the unexpected, the benefit of having to veer off one course and, before plotting the next, experience the freedom of getting lost. To set out without knowing where one is going. To wander for 40 years, if need be, before making one’s way to the Promised Land. To accept, not fight or implode, at the sense that one has no idea how or why or where one is. The moment we are without our GPS, the exact moment when we have veered so far mistakenly off course that we don’t know how we will ever find our way back, or out – that is the moment when something new can happen.
If we take the same route, same road, every time, we don’t see what’s just off the next exit, or the one prior. We don’t know what’s just around the bend unless we take a tiny detour and head off track.
I remember a corn maze from a few years back. Simultaneously thinking there was, of course, no danger, and yet the first millisecond that I’d lost my bearing, realizing I could just as easily go one way a the next, that I was, in fact, lost, I felt the rush of the fight-or-flight response.
Once, my son was lost. In retrospect, of course he was not lost. He was exactly where he was, clearly visible by those who knew he was there. But invisible to me. It was at an elaborate play structure, one we’d never been to before that we’d found while on vacation. I was amidst all the other Moms and Dads watching and growing slightly bored with slides and climbing and the hum of other people’s children. I knew exactly where he was. And then I didn’t. In less than the time to blink an eye I was filled with panic. Pure, illogical, improbable, un-soothe-able panic. My son was gone. I scanned, I searched. He simply wasn’t there. I asked other parents if they’d seen him. Parents who didn’t know me, didn’t know my son. To them, I was the slightly hysterical stranger that neighborhood families learn to back away from, to avoid eye contact, to remain aloof yet increase the vigilance for the whereabouts of one’s own children.
In the absence of my son and any reassurance from a known parent/kids playgroup, I urged myself to stay calm, admonished myself not to panic. Useless advice. There is nothing that will fill the gaping absence of a child other than primal terror. The pitch of my internal scream would have shattered windows, but the play structure was made of only wood. This went on and on, interminably. The panic rose, my confidence plummeted. I couldn’t figure out which was worse – that my son was gone or that I’d lost him. That I’d never see him again or that it was my fault and I’d be forever blamed for . . . well, for what, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t been reading, hadn’t been listening to music, hadn’t been talking to others . . . I’d been watching my son at a park, seen him climbing and sliding and moving from one structure to the next, watching intently, scanning, knowing exactly where he was; and then he wasn’t. I wasn’t clear what I was to blame for, but when your child has disappeared, there is only one person to blame, and that’s the one who was there. Every kidnapping story I’d been unable to read, every email about child snatching I’d deleted in disgust, smug in the knowledge that fear-mongers will stop at nothing to destroy freedom and that their attempts are futile and best ignored, returned now. I was the fool, the next crazed mother to be filmed by the local news crew. I’d fallen through the rabbit hole, and come face to face with the unnamable.
It turns out my son also thought he was lost. He looked up and couldn’t find me. He panicked. He, however, was able to see the rest of the grown-ups in our party, who had strolled away from the playground, deep in conversation. We were visiting friends who we only see every year or so, making the times we connect so precious that we launch into the twin need to catch up and know everything that has happened since the last time we have seen each other and to re-visit old memories and stories cementing the permanence of our relationship. The others had wandered off, leaving my son and I happily ensconced in the play structure. When my son didn’t see me, he made a beeline for the others in our group; I remained at the wooden structure, my hopes for a happy outcome seeping through my fingers as if it were a B-movie and the camera zoomed in to my hands giving way.
The other adults, immersed in their stories and catching up, eventually noticed my son tagging along behind them. Panic had stolen his voice; he’d not uttered a sound. The group kept walking, adult conversation resumed. And then, slowly, it dawned on them: he’s here and his mother isn’t. She’s gonna be worried. We should take him back.
I dared not leave the play area, but my son wasn’t in it. I needed to find the others. I fled the play area, screaming to the other grown ups, a Munch-like Mother running to the insistence of an inner mantra, “He’s gone!” I screamed and ran and cried and shrieked and then I saw them, heading toward me.
He wasn’t gone. He was safe. With the others. He was safe. He was there. He’d been somewhere all along. He hadn’t been taken, hadn’t been kidnapped, hadn’t been whisked off in a grey van with the local pedophile.
In the – now, I can’t really know for sure – seconds? minutes? of our separation, I lost something I have never regained.
Maybe getting lost isn’t always like this, overlaid with panic, guilt, unthinking and unthinkable anguish. But that day, it was. The emotions of that day have not dissipated. Along with a few other moments of primal terror, it remains, intact, as one of the scariest moments of my life. Time has not healed this wound, logic hasn’t soothed it, the ongoing, relentless health and well-being of my son does nothing to mitigate it.
There is getting lost, taking the wrong turn. And then there is getting lost and being forced to live in the wilderness for 40 years, to stay long enough so that the elders die off, so that an entire new generation is born and raised with a new way of doing things, long enough so that the old ways, deeply ingrained and impossible to change, must die out rather than be left to dissipate. Then there is being lost, you and your world simply vanishing.
Where does this leave me with the existential lesson that wisdom and creativity germinate in the unknown? Here’s my take-away. Breathable, safe-enough getting lost may foster new growth, but nothing grows when we cease to exist.
May I set out many, many times only to find myself somewhere unintended. May I forever give myself permission to stop, take the long way, bumble along into the vague unknowing. In fact, may everyone in my family have this opportunity, something these days we might call going off the grid from time to time. But I want to know exactly – not metaphorically, not existentially – where my loved ones are while they’re relishing the bounty of getting lost. May we never be lost.