i gotta tell you a story about something that happened in my life during the midst of this letter discourse

the day all the letter stuff unfolded, i was busy with my kids all day. i didn't really have time to devote to reading anything, much less developing a take on it. i was making peanut butter crackers with sprinkles, washing dishes, cutting blackberries into quarters, etc.

and i was a little bit frustrated because i wanted to get in on the action and participate in the Discourse on this modern agora. but stuff kept happening. jane painted her sister's feet green while she was sitting in her high chair; clare put a pea in her ear, etc.

and then finally it was bedtime. clare went to sleep in her crib, and i tucked jane into her bed, kissed her goodnight, and closed the door. then it was posting time. i started to read the letter, sipping my valerian tea, and my husband appeared and asked: where's jane?

i told him she was in bed. no, he said, she's not: i just checked. we both went to her room. the door was open, and she wasn't in bed. we assumed, uneasily, she was maybe playing hide-and-seek, to avoid going to sleep. we checked her closet, her toy box, under the bed. no jane.

we checked our room: nada. we checked the living room: nothing. the kitchen, the bathroom, the pantry, with increasingly frantic whispering, and then finally shouting: jane! come out! jane, baby, where are you?! i can't describe the dread stillness of a child who isn't there

Matt put on his shoes; we were both panicking now. he grabbed his phone and took off, out of our building, onto the street, calling for her. i kept checking places i had already looked. i checked the windows. had she fallen out, god forbid? i checked the dish washer, the oven.

by then i was hyperventilating. i felt dizzy, faint. i knew that it was time to call the police; i just couldn't believe it. i stumbled into our bedroom to get my phone, which required me to pull back our duvet,

under which jane was sleeping soundly.

i called matt, told him to come home. he did, red-faced, still breathing hard. we stood together and looked at her sleeping there, with a kind of wonder we hadn't felt since she was a newborn. he picked her up reverently, and laid her down in her bed.

i opened the kitchen window and smoked. it felt like it took hours for my heart to beat normally again. there was no way i could sleep, so i thought of reading that damned letter, coming up with some view on it. but i couldn't focus; i was too fixated on this gift of jane.

so i put it aside, didn't join the fray. a dereliction of duty, maybe, but it's not as though there was a dearth of commentary. it was a severe mercy, to borrow vanauken, to be brought back to the vital stuff of life. i told her never to do that again, but secretly i owe her.