True confessions

Like Edie, I can't help but think of Madeleine McCann more often than is good for my peace of mothering mind. Partly because how can you not think of a little girl scared and away from her parents. Partly because I don't know what kind of media attention this is getting in the States, but her sweet young face is unavoidable in Europe unless you want to go into a self-imposed media blackout. Mostly, though, I can't stop thinking about this little girl taken from her hotel room while she slept as her parents ate dinner 100 meters away because R and I have done this.

When Small Boy was a little over four months old, R and I took him to Spain. Friends of our were getting married in a small town in central Spain; the reception and dinner after the wedding were held in a beautiful old castle that had been converted into a hotel. R and I made a long weekend out of it and stayed at the Parador the entire time although there would have been cheaper options in the town. With Small Boy in tow - this was our first overnight trip with him, in fact - we wanted the ease and practicality of staying in the place the dinner and reception would be held. We wanted to be in a hotel with nice common areas so that one of us could sip a coffee and read a book in the courtyard while the other stayed in the room during a Small Boy nap. We wanted good room service. Our room turned out to be right above the dining room - close enough so that from the dining hall we had baby monitor reception. On two separate evenings - our first night there and then again the evening of the wedding - we ate in the dining room, baby monitor in hand, while Small Boy slept alone in the room upstairs. Door locked, do not disturb sign on, baby monitor blinking away.

I don't remember if I was a nervous nelly the first evening. Did we pop up to check on him even though the monitor was functioning? I don't remember. I do remember that during the wedding dinner I went up to the room several times - often enough that it was remarked upon (in my absence and, I think, not kindly) by one of my table mates. (That's okay. I didn't like her anyway.) There was a storm coming in and now and then the monitor would throw out static. I must have crept upstairs to our room half a dozen times and in the end I turned in long before the festivities were over and left R downstairs to be our better social half.

What would we have done if we hadn't had a room close enough for baby-monitor reception? I suppose I would have worn him to the wedding dinner and when (if?) he fell asleep slipped him into the Dreamy and tucked him into a safe corner guarded by a few well-placed chairs. At four months Small Boy was an unreliable sleeper; leaving him in the room without a monitor would have been impossible for me. Not out of a safety concern - I don't think the thought of Small Boy being spirited out of our hotel room ever crossed my mind - but because the thought of him crying unheard, unresponded to, was - is - intolerable to me. I think I worried about him rolling on to his stomach - he had just started doing this - but I never thought somebody would sneak into the room and take him. It just never occurred to me. Should it have?

But we did have baby-monitor reception and we did leave him sleeping in the room alone while we ate downstairs. It's not uncommon in Europe. Back in Small Village our upstairs neighbors would go to the restaurant across the street after the kids went to sleep. Once at a wellness hotel R and I stayed at in Austria the family that ate next to us in the dining room brought down the baby monitor every evening. In a small village it's not uncommon to leave your baby sleeping in the stroller outside while you pop into the butcher for three minutes. Is it irresponsible? Well, hindsight colors your perspective on what's responsible, doesn't it? Nothing happened to Small Boy in Spain, nothing happened to the baby in Austria, nothing happens to the wee ones in their strollers outside the butcher. Nothing happens to the vast majority of young children left briefly on their own and if we're honest lots of small children are left briefly alone in circumstances the parents have judged to be safe. I've got no qualms with what we did in Spain because I went to Spain with my four month old son and five days later I returned from Spain with my four month old son. But if something had happened? Was it irresponsible? From a US perspective one would almost certainly say yes; of course, these days it seems to me that anything short of sheer perfection all the time is considered irresponsible in the US; every day events are suddenly lapses in judgement or mistakes.

I'm not trying to be flippant. I'm trying, perhaps badly, to make a point about the limits of reasonable responsibility and I'm trying, perhaps badly, to make a point about how we in the US especially seem to me to at times think we have somehow managed to transcend tragedy. To control it and to fence it off over there somewhere. Bon of Cribchronicles writes movingly of our shock upon realizing that we cannot always save our children. Of course the two scenarios could not be more different but the common thread of truth in Bon's story and the McCann's story is the deep belief almost imbedded now in our cultural DNA that we should have been able to do something, that we could have been able to do something, that we can save and protect our kids from everything. Of course the McCann's could have done something; they could have ordered room service. They didn't. Like, if we are honest, thousands of other parents. They, I'm sure, assessed the situation and assumed it would be safe. As I child I walked to and from school by myself. At some point I joined up with some girlfriends and we walked the rest of the way together, but I walked by myself, played by myself, went on bike rides through the forest preserve by myself. How, really, is it any different? Parents assess and decide all the time.

We make judgement calls every day, dozens of judgement calls every day. And here is the truth none of us want to face. No matter what decisions we make, what choices, what we do, we cannot keep tragedy over there. We can make tragedy less likely, perhaps, but we cannot keep it over there. When R and I bought Small Boy's front-facing car seat we bought the seat with the highest saftey ratings. We strap Small Boy in properly every single time. We drive carefully and thoughtfully. Most days when I drive to the Farm I take the Autobahn, but I always evaluate the weather and my level of alertness and some days, not many, but some, I take the secondary road and avoid the Autobahn because I think on that given day it's the safer call. But do you know the one time we were almost plowed into head-on by an idiot trying to pass five cars in a row was, of course, on the secondary road? Other than R's fast reaction time, there was nothing we could have done about that scenario other than not leave the house that day.

That is the truth none of us want to face, perhaps because facing it all the time would make it impossible to live: we do what we can, what we reasonably can, but we cannot control the world and we cannot, truly in the deepest meaning of the word, keep our children safe. We do what we reasonably can. But every day I have to trust that the world is not a fundamentally malevolent place. I trust that the driver waiting at the cross-walk won't suddenly step on the gas as Small Boy and I pass in front of her car. I trust that the person helping me lift Small Boy's stroller onto the tram won't forcefully yank the stroller away from me and run as the tram doors close and the tram pulls away with me on it. I trust the driver in the lane next to me is not drunk. I trust the man walking his dog won't let him off the leash just as Small Boy goes running by. One day I will trust Small Boy's teachers to be good and decent people. I will trust the fathers of his friends to have their military-issued firearms as well and safely stored as R. I do what I can, what I can reasonably be expected to do while still allowing Small Boy to experience the world and learn, slowly and safely, to recognize danger for himself. But I can't do everything and I can't be everywhere and in the end, I trust that the world is not a fundamentally malevolent place.

It seems, some days, like a fool's wish. But here's the point I'm trying, long-windedly, to make. If I believed, if I really believed that there in the middle of Alcaniz, Spain, someone lay waiting for the opportunity to steal a small child out of a hotel room, if I really operated as though that were my every day expectation of the world, I would never leave the house. If I truly believed people all around me were capable of such things my world would be small beyond measure; and I would be doing Small Boy a grave disservice. Soon I will teach Small Boy about Getting Lost and Policemen. I will teach him that if he needs to ask a stranger for help to look for a police officer and if he can't find one then he should try to find somebody with children to ask. I will teach him Not to Get Into Cars with Strangers. I will teach him it's okay - it's good, it's great, it's wonderful - to scream if somebody Tries to Touch Him Funny. But while doing all of this I will teach him, somehow, that most people are good and most people are kind and most people will help him. The world is not, in spite of how it seems some days, a fundamentally malevolent place. I don't want to armour myself as if it were; I don't want to teach Small Boy to armour himself as if it were.

I let Small Boy sleep alone in a hotel room in a foreign country with only a baby monitor as my watchman. Perhaps I shouldn't have. But I did. I may never, now, after this, do it again, but I did it then. R and I made a decision we thought was reasonable and safe. And though the world isn't always a safe place, neither is it always a horrible one. Perhaps I am a fool wishing fools wishes, but I do what I reasonably can for the Small Boy and as for the rest of it, I can only believe that the world is not a fundamentally malevolent place. If that is a lapse in judgement, to assume if not the best of people than at least not the worst, then it is a lapse in judgement that allows me, most days, to look most of the human race in the eye.