I couldn’t make this up even if I tried.

I had two harrowing experiences today. And it isn’t even 12pm yet.

It all started when I took both my kids to breakfast. I wanted to have breakfast at the coffee shop near my house. I caught my boy at the corner of my eye. He was standing just outside the coffee shop. I thought I would push the stroller with my baby girl to an empty table before getting my boy to join in.

Except that he was GONE when I went to pick him up just a minute later.

At first, I wasn’t alarmed because he was wearing shoes on his hands. It’s Chinese New Year and he is into lion dancing, so these days he wears both pairs of shoes and hops around, pretending to be a ferocious lion. I thought he was busy pretending to be a lion and would come back to us in due time.

That didn’t happen. After some agonising minutes, I carried my baby girl and looked for him.

I wasn’t thinking rationally at this point. My country is safe, but I kept thinking about how he might be abducted in the minute that I left him out of my zone. With adrenaline coursing through my veins, I searched high and low for him. Went to the nearby playground, called his name out in the grocery shops, returned to my flat in case he went back there to look for us.

Nil, nil, nil. My wife was still sleeping blissfully at home. I wondered about the fallout this would generate when I had to tell her that her beloved son was missing and let’s make a police report.

I kept walking around and retracing my footsteps. Still no sight of him. I just wanted to abandon my quest and cry. But I’m not the crying sort, so tears don’t fall easily down to offer me relief.

Then I thought, maybe he went to the coffee shop further away from our house. Because that’s my usual breakfast place. I just didn’t think of going there immediately because that was some distance from where we were. I didn’t think he would remember the route.

Still, desperate means call for desperate measures. I walked there, calling out his name.

“Papa” never sounded so sweet before.

I hugged him and made him promise never to go anywhere without me again. I thought that would be the end of my dramatic morning.

Except that I realised that my wallet was missing when I wanted to pay for my breakfast.

Omg, now I am going to have to cancel all my debit and credit cards?!! How much trouble would this add to my life?

I felt myself escalating to panic mode the second time today. I told my boy who was blissfully eating bread and said that we had no time to waste. I was ready to embark on the quest to solve the mystery of the missing wallet.

Perhaps with my first harrowing experience still fresh in my mind, I didn’t let my impulses overrule me entirely. I thought - it’s more likely for me to forget to bring my wallet out from my house than to lose it in the open.

Yes, I can be scatter-brained. Parenting does that to me. There are so many things to take care of, and I’m not a fan of multitasking in the first place. Having to juggle so many balls in my mind when I grieve over my lost freedom is a recipe for mistakes. I do many things but forget to take care of other things.

Anyway, I returned home. Yes, my missing wallet was in its home at my house. I did forget to bring it out.

Lessons learned