Missing

My new job requires me to bike somewhere between two-and-a-half to three miles uphill each morning to reach the office at 8.  Normally I wouldn't mind this challenge - the way B. cooks I think my pedaling commute has been the only thing keeping me under 200 lbs - but there's a slight hitch in the nature of this job.  I do graphic design in a very formal office setting.  As in shirt and tie formal.  So working up a sweat pedaling uphill for 25 minutes as the hot summer heat turns the balmy morning from 75° to 90° isn't really feasible.  After a few weeks I've finally figured out the right timing and pace to get there without clocking in panting and drenched.

This has given me a taste for biking again, however.  My bike is nothing to look at, it's just a commuter bike that usually requires a new tire every two to four months with a bent gear that makes a strange clicking sound whenever my right foot pedals down.  But I'm grateful for it nonetheless; it's served me well for over two years and 30 minutes on a bike beats an hour walking to work.  Despite its mild state of partial dilapidation, I put the bike to the test last weekend.  I got up early, long before B. planned on waking up, filled my small camelbak and rode down to a small trail that follows a local river into the mountains.

This was why I first fell in love with biking.  As I pedaled past a lazy river in the cool shadow of the mountains I drank in all the green that passed me by.  The air felt purer, the quiet sweeter, nature in its solitary serenity.  Gorgeous.

I reached a waterfall both B. and I are familiar with and took a quick photo on my phone to text her (in case she was still asleep) just to let her know I was fine and that I'd be back in around an hour.  I rode the rest of the trail until it at last ended at a park in the foothills.  I stopped briefly to take in the scenery and admire the ponds and the reservoirs before turning around and beginning my journey home.  I half-heartedly raced another cyclist whose wheels vastly surpassed my own for about half of the return trail until at last he overtook me and gained an impressive lead.  I will say this: it's hard to keep up with road bikes when all you have is a clunky commuter with thick mountain bike tires.

All in all my route took me about 25 miles total.  The camel bak had sustained me for only the first 10.  I was very thirsty and already beginning to feel sunburnt.  I glided into the driveway, locked up the bike and headed inside to find...

No one.

B. was gone.  I called her name.  No response.  I called her cell only to hear her ringtone emitting from the kitchen.  There on the counter sat her abandoned phone.  I checked every corner of the apartment, which took all of 4 seconds, to find that she wasn't home.

Her wallet was home, as was her phone...

Keys!  I hastily dumped out the contents of her purse.  The car key was there, as was the car, still parked safely in the driveway.  But no B.  There were only a few places she could have gone with only her housekey in tow.


...In the first few months of being married, I discovered that one unexpected husbandly duty of mine was apparently fetching morning refreshment.  Coke, Starbucks, donuts, bagels, what have you.  These were all but tools in my arsenal as designated breakfast shopper/errand boy.  My punishment for being a morning person.  And I was her punishment for marrying a morning person.  But as we slowly adjusted to each other's routines I left earlier for classes and she learned to forage for sustenance on her own.  Slurpees at a nearby 7-11 or coke at a Chevron close by was usually enough to jolt her into consciousness and reluctantly welcome the day...


I mentally planned out a route that would hit both of these common watering holes as I hopped on my bike once again.  The 7-11 crowd was sparse.  And an empty Chevron raised my heart rate a tick higher.  Where was she?

After checking with a few neighbors to no avail I widened my search perimeter, occasionally calling her name.  I did the math as my legs pumped me past each block.  I sent her the waterfall text an hour before I got home.  She had received it and checked it before she left. So she left the house some time in that hour-long window between when I sent the text and when I got home.  She had been gone anywhere between 20 and 80 minutes.  

As I furiously pedaled around the neighborhood trying not to panic, something else occurred to me other than the burning sensation in my now exhausted, deadweight legs:  this happened to me before.  Not the exact same scenario, but something like it.


...Years ago my sister went missing while I was babysitting.  She must have been about 4 or 5 at the time.  I tried to urgently enlist the help of my brothers, but Nintendo held their attentions with such a vice-grip that the gravity of the situation didn't fully register to their slavish sluggish brains. (there's a part of me that still hasn't forgiven them - or the manufacturers of Nintedo64) And so rather than spend any more precious time releasing them from the screen's hypnotic hold, it was left to me to find her.  

I raced around that old neighborhood calling her name and checking backyards of friends and neighbors.  I called the mother of my sister's playmate and asked in the shaky, cracking, panic-stricken voice of a teenage boy on the verge of tears if she had seen my sister anywhere.  Although she hadn't, she had seen me bike past earlier and informed me she was headed over to help us look...    


When I rounded back home with still no sign of B. panic continued to gnaw at me.  I resisted the urge to call friends and family, the police, the NSA, DEA, FBI, CIA, and every other noodle in the alphabet soup of American bureaucracy and told myself there was still one last hope: the trail I had taken north to the foothills also extended south. We often ran or walked the south stretch of it and it usually took about half an hour, 45 minutes tops.  If she had in fact decided to go on a walk - if she had left mere minutes before I returned home and we had simply missed each other, she shouldn't be far from home by now.

So, with a pit in my stomach I churned my dead legs onward.  Terrible visions of my wife bleeding in a field or face down in a ditch or floating down the river haunted my mind as I wound past parks and pedestrians.  Maybe it was God sending me a sign, maybe it was dehydration coupled with exhaustion, or maybe I was just paranoid about her being soaked in blood, but for some reason I kept my eyes peeled for red amidst all the green of the trail.  Nearly a mile and a half in and halfway through my 23rd furious threat to God that if anything happened to her, so help me... I saw a figure emerge round the corner.


...  As I hung up the phone I resigned myself to the fact that I was out of my depths and needed to inform my parents that I, an irresponsible monster, had lost their only daughter.  My brothers had taken note at my panic and had broken away from their game's spell to search the perimeter of the yard. I picked up the phone again.  I dialed my parents, steeling myself, willing myself not to cry. I wondered how Air Force Security handles missing child cases on a military base when suddenly a blob of obnoxious neon flashed past my view of the front yard.  I heard through the front screen door my brother declare in his indifferent monotone, "There she is." 

And there she was.  Her neon swimsuit still soggy from playing in the sprinklers in our neighbors' backyard. She, with all the convincing sweetness of a 4-year-old girl, had falsely testified to said neighbors that I was aware of her presence there.  Flecks of grass stuck to her skin, her hair was dripping, and a wide, devilish, tomboy smile was painted across her face.  

I hung up the phone.  I'd tell them after I killed her...


There, sweating from head to toe, dressed in a bright red yoga top, iPod earbuds swaying in rhythm to her stride was my sweet B., eyes wide in surprise at my sudden appearance.  And a wide, tomboy smile painted across her face.

"Hey you!" she said sweetly.

...I was less welcoming.


...I told my sister to rinse off her swimsuit in the shower and then we'd start a bath to get her warmed up. Not long after we had started drawing the bath the mom of her friend - the mom I had enlisted in my would-be search party - the mom who I still remember fondly as a dear family friend knocked on the door.  

I let her in and, after quickly gathering the facts, she beckoned my sister from her perch on the couch, wrapped in a towel, eating a popsicle and waiting for the bath.  She pulled my sister aside and did what I honestly couldn't.  

I was the babysitter.  The brother.  The twelve-year-old, idiot brother, more of a larger child than an adult figure, without any illusion of authority.  And this mom, she did it well.  She didn't chew out my sister; at four years old, she couldn't have known better.  But instead of falling down and weeping over the lost lamb or screaming bloody murder at a helpless, soaked toddler (both of which were my immediate impulses upon seeing her), she quietly, seriously explained to her that what she had done was NOT ok.  She didn't chew her out; she gently gummed her into a realization of her wrongdoing. She nodded shamefaced, I thanked the mom profusely for all her help and then led my stupid sister to her stupid bath so she could get ready for stupid bed... 


B. isn't stupid.  She isn't a toddler. 

After I swore, yelled, chewed her out and grabbed her tight she proceeded to make what I'll admit is a pretty valid case in her defense.  Had I investigated the closet I would have seen that her running shoes were gone.

But you have like three pairs, I saw the pink ones still at home and I panicked!

Next to her wallet and phone was an empty space on the counter that usually held her Nike watch that tracks the chip in her shoes and marks her pace and progress.  Watch AND shoes gone = I'm on a run.

You left your PHONE!!!  Why would you do that?!?!!!  I've been calling and calling I was ready to call everyone we know and set up search parties!  I panicked!

I don't have pockets, besides, I knew you'd be back by noon, I figured you'd piece together that I was on the trail and wait it out, it's only been about 30 minutes.

Half an hour of you gone and me having no clue where you were.  I PANICKED!

I know I shouldn't have been as upset as I was.  I apologized profusely the rest of the day for lashing out at her the way I did and she apologized for leaving her phone behind.  She had decided on a whim to extend her 3 mile trip into a full 5 miles, which explained her tardiness.  We both felt much better once we got out of the heat and rehydrated.


Finding a missing girl brings out a mixture of emotions.


I can't recall any other instance when I have simultaneously wanted to strangle and embrace someone at the same time.  Relief and anger aren't meant to co-exist, and the chemical cocktail these emergencies produce is heady tonic indeed.  I never did strangle my sister, and as I first held B. tightly and waited for my heart to stop racing, I resisted the urge to squeeze her until her eyes popped out.  B. is obviously fine and well, if not a little more aware and attentive of how much she means to me.  

On an unrelated note, I also think that stress and long bike routes stir up quite an appetite; once we had rehydrated we celebrated with steaks for lunch.  I then had 3 homemade burgers for dinner.  Even then I was still hungry after 4 full servings of beef.  Terror makes you hungry I guess.

Our little adventure was a good reminder not to take those we love for granted.  She was genuinely touched by my panic and I don't think we've been this clingy since the honeymoon.  I rarely see her as it is and it has pained me to leave her for work each day.  I dread the day I come home and she's not there.  She's not allowed to go missing from my life.  Ever.

Stupid shoes.


S