Love and Panic

I was five and we were visiting our cousins in Texas. Being so young and fully aware that I was not home, a distant fear of losing my family constantly threatened to put me in hysterics. It was for this reason that I was averse to everything about going to Sunday school class with my cousin April. Everything was new--a terror to kids like me.

The room was boxy. The walls were pasty white. The hard metal chair beneath me was starkly different from my home's rocking chair. Dislike filled me as I looked at the flannel board with fuzzy characters patted on it. Seeing this, familiar as it was, brought no relief to the certain dread that my family would forget me here. Somewhere in the teacher's lesson she said something about going on a field trip. Shock pierced my little heart. Whatever she had said left me with no doubt that we were to leave now and that I would leave this church building without my mom and dad and siblings and I would never see them again. What horrible vindication to my suspicions! I started to cry. The strangers tried to reason with me. I remember the teacher reaching for me with a concerned look and high voice used by all adults to soothe children. Suddenly there came a quiet knock.

Around the side of the door, my father popped in his head of black brown immaculately military style hair. When he saw me, he smiled and said, "I thought I heard that cry." With a wink to the teacher, he came into full view from behind the door. He put his rescuing arms out to me and I happily jumped in. He spun around and headed for his original destination--the water fountain. The rest of the day I sat with him. Better than that, I learned something that would have a profound effect on my view of life forever: someone had heard my cry.