Kid-napped?

She didn’t go far. She couldn’t.

I wrote the following story on Notes and people seemed to like it, so I decided to share it here for the Un-Noted. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this sooner.

We were on a KLM flight from Malawi to Amsterdam with a toddler daughter and an infant son. We had three seats to ourselves in an exit row on that big 747, and because we were bone tired, we all fell asleep.

Since I don’t sleep well on a plane, I soon awoke and discovered our daughter was missing. Not panicking, I started walking around to find her. A flight attendant saw me and asked if I was looking for our daughter. I nodded.

“She was trying to use the phone to call the pilot, and since I didn’t want to disturb you, I took her to the aft galley.”

I followed her back and saw my daughter, perched on the shoulders of a flight attendant and entertaining several others.

The Dutch have a culture of love for children, and every time we visited Holland or their distant cousins in South Africa, there was always an auntie who would volunteer to help us with our children.

Even in a remote little burg in the former Orange Free State in South Africa where we stopped at a cafe, we were charmed when an sweet Afrikaans oomah borrowed our vivacious toddler and carried her back to the kitchen, to the evident delight of the kitchen staff. We could see and hear the happiness.

Or the time in Holland, when we visited a wooden clog factory north of Amsterdam and a tall, blonde, young Dutch woman who worked there borrowed our toddler and took her on a special guided tour, always staying for us to make sure we were comfortable, to the young woman’s and our daughter’s great delight.

Anytime I visit a place where elders and children are cherished, I know it’s a good place that honors both the past and the future.