Hide and Seek

As he stood quietly in the corner of the busy store, memories of his childhood swept over him.

"Ready or not, here I come!"

Her voice was that of an angel. That voice that had nurtured him since the moment he entered this world. It took all of his might not to run out from his hiding place behind the curtains into her arms, and he giggled quietly to himself.

In retrospect, his hiding place was not all that great. His toes peeked out from under the not-quite-long-enough drapes, and there was no way that his favorite red and white shirt kept him concealed. But yet, as with each time they played his favorite game, she stomped by his concealment, wondering out loud in a sing-songy voice:

"Hmmm, where could Waldo be?"

After a few minutes of her ruse, he couldn't take it any more and leapt out at her.

"Mommy, I'm here, I'm here!"

A customer jostled by him in a hurry, awakening him from his vivid flashback. She had disappeared so suddenly. Without warning, without so much as a goodbye. In the following days and weeks, everybody told him it wasn't his fault. Yet he swore that he would find her, and he did this in the best way he knew how.

When he hid, she always found him. Always.

And so he would keep on hiding, searching for that warmth and comfort that he had lost so many years ago.