The Biggest Scare

August 27, 2024

The Biggest Scare

This summer we had the biggest scare we ever want to have at the beach. This being Labor Day weekend with plenty of beach activity occurring on both sides of our country, I want to share what was a recent nightmare for our family. One of our young grandsons slipped away and disappeared.

We share this difficult story to maybe help someone else avoid the drama we lived through for something like 40-45 minutes.  

Our hearts seemed to stop beating as we hurriedly looked for him, each of about 10 adults in our party spreading out in various directions, plus some of the older grandsons.

One of the child’s brothers was crying his eyes out and needless to say, the child’s mother could barely talk she was so panic stricken. I could hardly breathe.

There were/are no lifeguards at this beach, although there were beach police keeping watch up and down the beach in Jeeps. I finally spotted one of the Jeeps coming our way, quite a way down the beach. Finally, I waved to her and was able to pull her attention to us as she came to stop for us. I quickly spelled out our dilemma, close to tears.

She began by asking the basic questions: What’s the child’s name, what color swimsuit was he wearing, how old is he? My other grandson knew the exact colors and shared them with the woman in the Jeep. She called one of the other beach patrols who apparently also had found a child who was lost, who matched our swimsuit color description and couldn’t find his family. This at first made us breathe a bit easier, surely they had found our grandson. Hope, hope, hope.

But several minutes later, as the Jeep driver tried to get help, she learned that the other child was twelve years old, much older than our five-year-old, which tore my daughter—the mother—even more. We began to fear the worst. Had he somehow slipped by his father who had been keeping very close watch, and slipped out to sea? The five-year-old was only a beginning swimmer and we knew he could easily panic under such a situation.

We had all tried to do our best to keep our eyes on all the kiddos, but so many waves tend to move unsuspecting children down the beach, and too quickly out of eyesight. There wasn’t really a riptide going, yet it was very hard to see sometimes with the sun beating down.

Another mother who went through a similar situation says they’ve been helped by always appointing one adult at a time to focus on a child as in: “You’ve got Frank now.” (Not his real name.)

Also we noticed a great idea another family utilized: a flag pole with a college-related flag flying on it, and having a dedicated space where a child should head if they become lost. And the child needs to remember that rule!

Finally, our young man’s other grandmother called my phone, saying she’d found him at their rented beach house! Apparently, when he got turned around and couldn’t find our cabana, he’d taken it upon himself to trot away from the beach sand, up over the boardwalk, and over the main street to get back to his beach house. He, five years old, crossed the street all by himself, searching for “the pink beach house.” He later told us he’d spotted one pink house that was the wrong shade, and kept going until he found the right pink house. Shortly after, this grandmother and another kind woman helping with the search found him on the family’s screened porch, safe and sound.

Years ago, my husband and I had spent a couple days at a different beach with my sister’s children when they were small. And one of them, the younger, disappeared for way too long. But at last he was found. My sister was just as emotional, just as relieved.

May you and yours find ways to keep track of the littles on the awesome beaches around our country, and may you have as happy of ending as we did. Both times.

Tell your story here, or of someone you know?

What do you enjoy about the beach? Or not?