Safe

A furtive call to my aunt, made from behind a rack of sweaters at a clothing store past 8 p.m., regarding the subject of some worryingly tough cubes of beef in a Boeuf Bourguignon, reminded me of something when I got home and was immensely gratified to find the beef, when tested again, fall apart beneath a fork.

At least twenty-five years ago, probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I decided one afternoon to ride my bike to the penny candy store a mile or so from my house. This store was a familiar destination. Along with my grandparents' house, two miles up the street in the other direction, it was one of the first places we were allowed to ride our bikes alone. It was a little unusual that I was by myself, and I can't remember why. Almost always, Alison was with me, or a cousin, or a friend, but I must have really wanted some candy because I'd set out solo. It must have been summer or after school in the fall or late spring, because it was warm, although not sunny, I do remember, and I'd been home alone before deciding to go for the bike ride because there was nobody home at my house when I got there, to the store.

Mostly what I remember about this part of the story is the sensation I had, the intuition or sixth sense, I guess you call it, that something was wrong. From pretty early on in the ride I'd had a feeling that someone was watching or following me. A car had slowed, then sped up, then appeared again as I rode past at a point it should have left far in the distance. This could well have had nothing to do with me. It is likely that this had nothing to do with me. But I was eleven or twelve and had a very active imagination and had read all of the YA books about kidnapping and I did, legitimately, have a funny, skin-crawling, goosebumpy kind of a feeling for most of the ride and then still, once I'd reached my destination. Instead of going into the candy store I went to the payphone--yes, payphone--and dialed my father's office. He was not there. I know my mother must have been occupied doing something out-of-the-ordinary, a doctor's appointment? a haircut? or I would have called her at school. These were the days before cell phones. When someone wasn't there, they weren't there.

So I called my uncle. He was at work; it was the middle of the day. He owns his own business, so it wasn't quite the same thing as calling an employer and asking for him, but it was a workday, the middle of a workday, and I didn't think twice. I am wondering now if I was a little bit older, as I don't think my grandfather, who died when I was thirteen, was alive; I distinctly remember calling my uncle.

And more than the calling, I remember he came. Ten minutes could not have passed, and he pulled up in front of the bench I was sitting nervously on in the parking lot. And he drove me and my bike back home and he waited until I was inside with the door locked, and he went back to work. And what strikes me about this memory now, which my uncle or parents probably don't even recall, is the absolute certainty with which I called my uncle, knowing that if I told him I was scared, told him I was pretty much anywhere, in need of pretty much anything, he would be there as fast as he could. And what struck me tonight, when I got home and checked the beef and called my aunt to tell her it had actually all worked out fine, was how many adults in my life were there for me like this growing up, how surrounded I was by this certainty that if I needed help, it would arrive, quickly, unquestioningly, lovingly, and from one of a dozen people who were part of my everyday life.

Of the many reasons I am lucky, or fortunate is perhaps a more appropriate word, this is one of the greatest, most significant, most lasting. I have never, not for one single day, one hour, one moment of my life, not felt a part of a connected group of people who would do anything for me, and did, who--still, when the phone rings in their home, at any hour, after any period of time--hear my voice and respond, automatically, with gladness: Amy! What can I do for you?

If I do anything for these two girls of mine, for whom I would do anything, it is to make them feel safe, Safe, like this. Thanks to the people who gave me this gift, thanks to my uncle with my bike in the back of his truck in the middle of a workday twenty-five odd years ago, I am trying as hard as I can.