February 21

“Where’s Marijke?” my wife’s voice broke into my dream.

“What do you mean? She’s in bed.” I groaned back at Krista. Of course, she was in bed. I looked at the clock and saw the display, ‘3:12’ it was in the am I was sure. Where else could my daughter be in the middle of the night. I rolled over and pushed back at her energy.

“She is not in her bed.” Came the sullen reply. “Go look for yourself.”

I rolled out of bed, sure there was some mistake and I could soon return to dreamland. I flicked on the lamp, grabbed my housecoat, and wandered down the hallway. I looked into my daughter’s bedroom at her new bed and my stomach sank to my toes.

The bed was empty. There was no attempt to even make it look like someone was in it. “What the… She was there three hours ago.”

Panic crept into my mind and my hands shook slightly. “Marijke! Where are you?” I wandered down the stairs, sure she would be somewhere in the house. I got to the empty living room and grabbed my phone. I called her name again and walked down the stairs to the basement.

Looking, fearing, seeking. Where was my fifteen-year-old ball of trouble? She has been going through the challenges of youth for the last year but never has she snuck out of the house.  I paced the floors, willing her to appear.

I dialed her number, and it rang… I dialed again and again and again. No Answer. I texted her Where are you! I felt lost, Krista put her arm around me, we held each other in distress. Where would my fifteen-year-old go in the middle of the night? We live in a secluded street, she only has one friend in walking distance that she may have gone to.

I circled the house again. What to do? It felt like a cosmic payback from when I was sixteen and snuck out of the house. I snuck out and hung out with my good buddy hot-knifing hash in the backseat of his Olds Cutlass. It was a different era back then, we probably shouldn’t have been driving the roads of south Calgary smoking our faces off and listening to music.

But we did.

Now in my world, I was faced with the same fear I must have given my parents. Dad locked the screen doors and I had to break into the house. He never said anything but I knew he knew. How should I handle my own kid’s escape trick? Now we have technology that my parents never did. Yet our new-fangled doorbell only had a snippet of a recording, no sign of my kid or anyone else.

I had to go look. I jumped into the car and drove down the street, I had to see if she was close. My fear for my little girl increased by the moment. She wasn’t anywhere in sight. I drove to the neighbours and looked down their driveway and didn’t see any footprints in the snow. All the while I was calling her phone, scared at the lack of response. Our new world holds many more dangers than the world I was in thirty-five-years ago.

I drove around another block and realized I had no idea where she could have gone. It was now 3:30 in the morning, did I phone the police? What would they do at this point she was only missing for a very short time. 

Then I saw her, walking down our street still in her PJ’s.

“Where the hell were you” I stopped next to her and held my breath, part of me wanting to scream and part of me so very relieved she was safe. I wanted to hold her, to hug her, to choke her…

“At my friend’s place. I was on the phone with her and she started crying so I went to see her.” She searched my eyes and jumped into the passenger seat of the car.

I looked back into her face, was she lying? What was the real story? I remember being that awkward teen trying to fit in. Yet I wanted to believe she had been just down the road. None of it made any sense and we went home. It was all I could do not to rail on her, not to scream and yell, not to cry.

A level of trust has been lost. Now we must rebuild. Still, I wait with anxious fear and hope to make it through these next few years. Covid has made things that much more insane for a teenager in the modern world.

I hope we can make it through in one peace.