A late December scare

One winter afternoon Becca, a mother of 3, was making lunch for her children. Her two oldest daughters, Lilly who was 6 and Rose who was 4 were outside playing in the snow. This was one of their favorite things to do in the winter. The night before there had been a snowstorm so there was a lot of white, powdery, fluffy snow. Elijah, who was the father, often liked to go snowmobiling in the winter especially after a snowstorm, and so did Lilly and Rose. After a while Rose went inside and Lilly was left outside playing alone while she waited for her lunch. Elijah asked Lilly if she wanted to go on a snowmobile ride, and of course she said yes. So they went inside, used the bathroom before they had to leave, and got all ready to go. Because this family was surrounded by woods, there are many trails to ride on which is where they went. A little after they left, the mother went outside to call her Lilly in for lunch, not knowing that she was on a snowmobile ride with Elijah, and this is where the panic began.

Becca continues to call and search for her daughter, beginning to panic, especially because of all of the fresh deep snow that could have caved in or fallen on her daughter. As she yelled for her daughter, there was barely an echo because of the muffling effect that the snow created. After the mother realized that she was not getting a response, she panicked even more, and could only assume the worst. As she is standing outside, she calls her mother, her oldest sister who lives in Hawaii, and the police. She talks to the police for a while, where they are setting up a plan and getting ready to go to their house with search dogs to try to help and find this missing girl. As Becca is on the phone with the police, she sees her husband come out of the woods on the snowmobile with Lilly. She cancels the request for the police and hangs up the phone. The mother runs up to them, relieved of stress and praised with joy that her daughter is safe and home. Becca tells her daughter that she was so scared that she was missing that she is so glad that she is safe. After all of this, Becca asked Elijah what happened. He said that when they came inside he yelled that they were leaving to go on a ride, but she clearly didn’t hear this.

The lesson that the father learned from this, was to always make sure to clearly inform someone’s parents if he is leaving with them to go somewhere with their kid, whether it is his own kids, a niece or nephew, little cousin, or any other child that he might watch. This whole thing is also a good life lesson in general. It is always important to double check everything, even if you are 99% sure because people are imperfect and things happen. Although this whole situation was an accident, it was still a mistake and there was a good lesson to be learned from it.

“With Snow” by cogdogblog is licensed under CC BY 2.0