i'm naked inside my fear

February 07, 2005 | 2:13 am
email to mom from minnesota, dated today, at this time:

today the temp dropped below 32. i think around 8ish it was about 13 degrees outside. at 5:30 we were driving to a friend of kelli's house to watch the superbowl, and one street from the house, a child darted across the road. we stopped the car and noticed that he was very young (too young to be out by himself) and only wearing a jacket (unzipped, no shirt) and sweat pants and no shoes. he looked at us in the car and kelli ran out and grabbed him. he was freezing cold and said he was trying to go home, but then he told us his house was on the other side of the road. he said his brothers were outside with him and his mom and dad were home. we got this out of him in a period of ten minutes or so, only after we called the police and wrapped his body in the white scarf you gave me. i got out of the car and ran down the street calling the names of his brothers, who were no where to be found. the police came, and went to the house the child said his mom and dad lived in. he came out shortly thereafter and said that the children (10, 5, and 3 -- the 3 being the one we found) must have snuck out of the house and gone out to play. he asked us if the child had a jacket on, and we said yes, but that it was open with no shirt, and he said he was going to have to return the child to the mother and father. aparently the other children, 10 and 5 were still outside unaccounted for. there was snow all over the ground and with the windchill it had to feel at most 20 degrees and the mother and the father of these children did not know/care that they were outside, unwatched, and aparently, separated from each other. a three year old running across the street crying came straight to kelli and sat in the car and let us wrap him in clothes and hold him. he cried when the officer took him from the car and back to the house. the officer came back and got our information and story again and then said that he thought he had been at the house one year prior, but on an unrelated visit.

i have read so much about neglect and this has been my first in-the-face experience with it. it is children like these that i want to help, but i do not think i was trained just yet for this experience. kelli, her bf nick, and i just had to follow our hearts and do what we needed to do. we were not happy to see him placed back into the home he "escaped" from, we were not happy there was not an arrest made for the neglect of three children who were running the streets in front of cars in the below freezing weather, and we were not happy to see his face twist as he was taken from the car to be brought back to the house. even though i was not happy with the outcome of the experience, it gave me faith in myself -- a feeling that if i was to experience this occurance again, and surely i will, that i will be able to control the situation and hope for a better outcome. it gave my goals more meaning and made my calling to social work only louder.

i wanted to tell you, as well, that i am so thankful that i was never left so irresponsibly in the streets to fend for myself. it made me feel thankful that i had a mother and a family who would have been searching for me had i walked out the front door and not just been sitting in the living room. i feel certain that my mother would have called the police for assistance, instead of some strangers who happened to be the only people driving down the snowy street.

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