treehugger

We spent the days with my inlaws today in Warrington, and took a few hours out this afternoon to Dunham Massey, kicking mushy leaves and climbing trees whilst making the most of the first glimmers of spring.

The place was heaving so I was a tad nervo about an excited child barging into my still-tender 'baggage area', but all was ok. That is until littleA decided not to stop peddling her bike and disappeared out of sight through a bottlenecked sea of people, her repeated-ear-infection ears not hearing us shouting her to stop.

We lost her. She was GONE. Nowhere to be seen. We split up and left ladySp33ds mum on sentry duty, ladySp33d going in one direction, me in another. I whirled and pinballed from parent to parent asking if anyone had seen her, but nothing. I still shouldn't run for fear of the newtons cradle effect tripping my stitches, but it became quickly obvious that I was going to have to, so I did - over to the mill, down to the stream, back up again across a field towards some deer before turning around again and along a different path. After about 10 minutes I caught up with her, being looked after by a passing-by older lady in pale blue who'd stopped her trying to peddle through the passing gate out into the vast maze of the seambursting car park and the road outside.

My heart still jumps when I think about it, but thankfully she was blissfully unaware, just peddling away in her own little world. We've had several chats about it since and an even stronger conversation about strangers and getting lost is brewing (especially after she said to us quite mattero'factly that she didn't feel scared because she knew she was safe and wasn't alone because "God is always with us and protects us", something I'll be chatting to her village-church school about on Monday for advice on how to tackle that one without bristling), but that wasn't the time or place for any of us so we held her tight, let our emotions ebb and took her for an ice cream.

I'm typing this now and something has just dawned on me: I started running 3 years ago for a reason, which some of you reading this will know. I've may not have run for 6 months, but this time I was able to - stitches and all.

And to the lady who found her: Thank you, Joyce. Thank you so, so much. One day I'll pay your calm quick-thinking forward. In the meantime though I'm ordering one of those.