gone

In what must have been one of the most heart-stopping moments of 2011, Day and Jo simply walked out of the house one night past 9pm and disappeared.

Why?

Day had misplaced KK’s lighter (for aromatherapy, not cigarettes). KK was mightily pissed off and told him to get a new one, thinking that even if the boy went, it would be on his own, to the nearby petrol station.

Instead, once again, the door clicked quietly, so quietly both I and KK, locked at our desks mired in work, did not hear anything.

Until a good 15 minutes later when I suddenly realized that only Lu had been coming to me for service.

KK, still miffed, went downstairs to the petrol station fully expecting both to be there.

He came up a while later – Are the kids back?

I said no. He said, They’re not there. Where are they?

He lurched back out into the dark night, heart in his mouth, scouring the pavements on both sides of the busy road.

In his absence, I did the laundry with a pounding heart. I asked Lu: Why didn’t you go? Because theoretically, she could have and we would have been none the wiser.

She said, all unconcerned and wondering at the fuss – I’m too small, lah.

It took another 10 minutes. At about 10, the door banged open and the two burst in.

Where did you go, I asked calmly.

They had gone to the nearby shopping centre, which entails crossing several small roads and one big one with a traffic light, to look for a lighter after trying the petrol station. They found it. Along with the lighter, Day bought Jo a tube of sweets from 7-11.

KK strides in. All he said was this – An ambulance passed by, sirens wailing, and I ran after it. I thought that was it.

He tears into Day, particularly since the boy was not even holding Jo’s hand when KK saw them.

Day protests. Jo had insisted on following him. He's walked the route many times.

But the fact remains that they had gone out without telling us, it was late at night and Jo went along.

Both kids are sent to bed in tears.

Why am I recounting this?

Because a few weeks after, Lu walks out of the house, my freaking three-year-old. She opened the door, put on her shoes, walked down three flights of steps, strode across the carpark and by the time I saw her she was almost out the big estate gate, about 10 metres from the main road.

I shriek and scream at her from the balcony to stop.

She said she wanted to pick flowers from the roadside to decorate the house.



Today, she asks me nicely for permission and I decide to bring her. “I want to buy something from the petrol station,” she says, holding Jo’s coin box which holds about two dollars worth of ten-cent coins.

She picks out purple grape sweets, makes me carry her up to the counter so she can pay the auntie, says ‘thank you’ and walks back home with me so she can dole out the sweets to her siblings.



How quickly they grow.