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A small child is standing by himself in the busy turmoil of a crowded city square among the whirl of rushed feet and voices merging into an unclear murmur. Wide with innocence and interest, his eyes sweep across the faces walking by in quest of a familiar smile absent. Unknown to him is his mother’s absence and the disturbing reason he is left alone—lost in the throng.
Any youngster finds it confusing and terrifying to be apart from a parent in a sea of strangers. But for this lad, the uncertainty is exacerbated by his lack of a clear knowledge of why he has been left to negotiate this foreign ground by himself.
Clutching a battered teddy bear to his bosom, he stands there and wonders unresolved questions. His mother is at where? Why had she left him here? Did he do anything wrong? In his youthful mind, the ideas whirl like a whirlwind threatening to overwhelm his brittle feeling of safety.
Usually a scene of great bustle and social events, the city plaza today seems as a maze of doubt. faces melt into a patchwork of obscurity, each person a possible stranger or a momentary hope his mother could come from the throng. His little height among the towering grownups accentuates his sense of isolation and makes him feel smaller and more vulnerable than ever before.
As his mother returns her quick course across the city, unnoticed to the lad, frantic footsteps resound in neighbouring alleys and passways. With every instant of distance from her child, panic closes her chest. Her voice, strained from crying out his name above the din of the metropolitan scene, has a desperation born of mother instinct and the basic need to shield her children.
Time seems to the lad to be an eternity of waiting and questioning. Now coloured with tears of uncertainty and anxiety, his eyes reveal the tough front he strives to keep. Every moment seems like forever, and every heartbeat sounds like a drumbeat of doubt. Still, behind the turbulence of his feelings, a glimmer of hope persists—a lighthouse driven by the natural confidence that the love of a mother will lead her back to him.
A man appears out of the sea of people as evening falls over the city and creates lengthy shadows across the cobblestone walk. His mother’s face marked with relief and tiredness, her arms out in a gesture of need and comfort. The boy’s questions find their answers in the warmth of her embrace in that instant as they meet among tearful hugs and muttered apologies.
It turns out that his brief abandonment was a result of a transient diversion in a packed market—a sudden lack of attention that had unanticipated results. Still, within the turmoil and the tears shed, a closer relationship develops between mother and child—a link reinforced by great relief after reunion and strengthened by difficulty.
The lad grips on to his mother’s hand as they travel home across the increasingly silent streets; his teddy bear is now firmly under his arm. Like a warning story, the echoes of their experience linger in the air, reminding us of the frailty of innocence in a society too frequently apathetic to the vulnerabilities of childhood.
Lost among the throng, ignorant of his mother’s absence and the cause of her solitude, this small child has gained a moving lesson in trust, fortitude, and the continuing power of love. His path over the maze of doubt has permanently changed his young heart; it reminds him that the guiding light of mother love will always take him safely home even in dark times.