The Adventurer

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Last week Sons # 1, 3, and 5 loaded up their mountain bikes and, with couple of buddies, headed to the annual Sedona Bike Festival in Arizona. Fierce, magnificent scenery, trails across the spectrum of difficulty, and lots of sunshine made the perfect setting for adventure. Son #1 told me that Son #5 is such an expert biker that if he were 10 years younger, he would certainly qualify to star in semi-pro biking videos. Of course, Son #5’s wife and I agree that such a change in his employment would require hiring a couple of full-time bodyguards—jobs which are currently filled by volunteers: brothers #1 and #3. Son #1, an Olympic class problem-solver, steps in when Son #5 jumps off the edge of a cliff and can’t figure out how to get himself and his bike back on the trail, and Son #3 is a doc who checks for concussions or tendon damage when Son #5 unexpectedly catapults over the handlebars.  (Both situations are more common than you might hope!)

As far as I can tell, Son #5 was born without fear. One November afternoon, I was awakened by the sound of very loud, very profane cursing outside my bedroom window. Four of my children were in one public school or another; two were enjoying an enforced nap; the one-year-old was asleep in her crib, and I was newly pregnant with son #6, so I was exhausted by 4 o’clock in the afternoon every day. I had taken advantage of the quiet to enjoy a brief snoozer myself.  When I roused enough to realize someone was yelling at me, I peered out my bedroom window. Below me on the street, I saw a grizzled fellow sitting on a mud-encrusted backhoe with two small boys perched on the tractor seat along each side of him. My small boys. Who were supposed to be asleep downstairs.

“Lady,” the fellow yelled when he spotted me. “Don’t you know how to take care of your kids? I pulled these two out of the retention pond down the street. They were up to their waists in freezing water and stuck in mud, so they couldn’t get themselves out. I’m gonna turn you into the Child Protective Services people. You *#*#* Idiot!”

The boys were obviously soaked to the skin and shivering. Son #4 ducked his head in shame. Not Son #5. He grinned up at me and shook his arms playfully, spraying icy brown water over all three of them. The backhoe guy glowed at him, then jumped from his seat, lifting one boy at a time onto our sidewalk. I could hear him threatening to call the cops if they ever pulled such a trick again.

Dragging the boys inside, I apologized over and over to the construction guy, thanking him from saving my sons from imminent demise by drowning. He rolled his eyes, slapped them both on the butt and headed back to work—forgetting to ask my name, thank heavens.

As I suspected, interrogation revealed that Son #5 had sneaked out of bed and headed up the stairs. Son #4, even at age five, understood that Son #5 needed some serious “looking out for” (as my Aussie trained granddaughter would say). So, when Son #5 jumped into the pond, his brother went after him, ending up literally ”in over his head”. By the time they were scrubbed down and cleaned up, Son #4 had fallen into exhausted sleep on the couch. Son #5 was at the front window already looking around for a new adventure.

The following summer, after he had turned four, I left Son #5 with one of only two friends who would even consider exchanging babysitting with me. I so was desperate for a haircut that I was willing to drive the five miles to her house, drop off Son #5, drive five miles back to the local beauty shop for the trim, then make the round trip again to retrieve my child. On my return, my friend came barreling out of house. Son #5 had disappeared a half hour after I’d left him. (No cell phones then, so calling my house in a panic was no help.) She told me the police were already looking for my missing four-year-old.

About an hour later, the local precinct got a call from a couple of women who had spotted a little blond-headed kid all alone and walking purposefully down 62nd South. When they stopped the car and tried to cajole him to climb in for a ride home, he absolutely refused to get in–something about his mother teaching him not to talk to strangers.

The women parked the car and delayed Son #5 till the police had time to show up. Son #5 jumped right into the patrol car. He’d walked almost a mile, and he was worn out; plus, the officer offered him a chocolate ice cream cone. (Son #5 had a low bar for talking to strangers.) He informed the officer he was going home because, as he said with disgust, “there was a girl. Don’t they have brothers at their house?”—a clear indictment of my childcare choice.

Son #5 had no trouble giving the officers clear directions to our house. Of course, when they arrived, there was no one there; my friend and I still were driving through her neighborhood searching. (It never occurred to us Son #5 might know where he was going.) Eventually, a dispatcher put two and two together and reunited me with Son #5, who relished telling me about his trek, detail by detail. Then he went back outside to play with his brothers–because it’s always good to have a brother or two standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you when head out on a new adventure.