While lots of days are pretty special, there is one that really sticks in Ross Johnston’s brain.
It’s late summer. The weekend, as I recall. I’ve been involved in building our new house, but it’s still not finished and every hour of sunlight’s valuable.
My wife left with our younger son and newborn baby about half an hour ago. She took the car and headed back to our current home, a crib about a kilometre away.
My 5-year-old son is about somewhere. He’s been "helping me". He loves mucking about with the tools and the brushes and the offcuts.
But when I go to leave he doesn’t respond to my call. A cursory inspection indicates he isn’t about.
Must’ve gone home with my wife I think, and I make a mental note to firmly suggest he tells me if he does that again.
I throw the tools and carpenter’s pouch on to the low bench-shelf in the now dark shed, lock it up and leave.
A quick walk and I’m home, only to find that my eldest son isn’t. A mild anxiety pervades my being. I swiftly retrace my steps to the building site.
The potential hazards of the half-built house seem to multiply with every footfall.
Could he have fallen off the deck? Was that ladder secure? Surely he hadn’t gone out on the roof.
Once on site I run from room to room, checking improbable places, peering into the foundations ... calling ... calling. Nothing.
Perhaps he’s walked home using a different route ... not the road. He knows that way.
I bound down the track and circle around by the seashore ... he could have slipped ... he could have drowned.
Shouting his name into the gloom multiple dire possibilities take residence in my brain.
Can’t do this on my own I decide. Time to call the neighbours. They respond willingly, get torches, get organised.
It’s eerie and frightening when the darkened bay is pierced by puny flashlights poking at the darkness with people calling his name.
I take the car back up to the building site. Was my search thorough enough ... did I miss something?
Well I did ... because as I stop the car there’s a face in the window of the locked shed.
Yes, he’d been asleep on the bench in the dark toolshed and woken there sometime after I’d dropped my tools near or on him.
The unbounded, unbridled exhilarating relief that goes with a found child remains with me many decades later ... though he says he doesn’t remember a thing.
The best day of my life? By a country mile ... but I don’t want another one like it.
- Ross Johnston lives in Purakaunui.
Your best day
Tell us about your best day. Send submissions to odt.features@odt.co.nz. We ask that you don’t nominate the day you were married or when a child arrived. But any other day is fine.
