It was 7:00 PM on a Tuesday. The house was quiet—too quiet. I went upstairs to tell Leo it was bath time, but his room was empty.
His bed was made. His stuffed animals were arranged in a somber row. And there, resting on the center of his duvet, was a piece of construction paper with scrawled red crayon.
I found a note on my 6-year-old’s pillow: “I am running away. Do not look for me.”.
My heart stopped. The world tilted on its axis. Panic set in. Visions of him wandering the dark streets alone flooded my mind. Was he safe? Was he cold? Had he packed a sweater?
I ran to the door, screaming his name. I was ready to call the police, the FBI, and the National Guard. I threw open the sliding glass door to check the perimeter.
Then I looked in the backyard.
There was no need for a manhunt. The fugitive hadn’t made it past the lawn furniture.
He was sitting in the tent he set up five feet from the patio.
The pop-up beach tent was glowing from the light of a flashlight inside. I crouched down and peered in. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t scared. He was living his best life.
He was eating a sleeve of Oreos. He looked like a tiny, sugar-dusted king holding court in his canvas castle.
“Leo!” I gasped, clutching my chest. “You scared me to death! Why did you run away?”
He looked at me with the solemn intensity of a union representative during a strike negotiation. He didn’t offer me an Oreo. He simply laid out his demands.
“He told me he’d come back when I learned to cook broccoli ‘the good way.’“.
The steaming pile of mushy greens I had served for dinner was apparently the final straw. He was protesting my culinary skills with a hunger strike that involved eating his body weight in chocolate sandwich cookies.
I sighed, the adrenaline fading into amusement. “Okay,” I said. “I accept your terms. No more mushy broccoli. We’ll do roasted with cheese.”
He considered this, nodded once, and crawled out of the tent. The crisis was averted, but I realized that in this house, the customer is not only always right, but he also knows where the cookies are hidden.
