Jennifer

It was another morning of running late to school. I had no time to get to the coffee shop if I was going to have my 15-year-old son to school on time. Once he gets his driver’s license, it will feel like Christmas morning, I am not going to lie. Between three kids and a husband who works crazy hours, I needed help. I openly admit I am not one of those perfect Pinterest moms. I do not have my shit together, far from it. On any given day there is always some crisis that could have been avoided if I was one of those Pinterest moms.

I only had a 15 minute time span from dropping off my son,to get my daughters to their school. My eleven-year-old had only been diagnosed with autism just last year. We are still trying to learn how to adapt to her, which basically means coffee would have to wait, as to not take her out of her usual routine.

One thing that could not wait, the one thing I specifically had to pencil in my appointment book, was the phone call. I had to make sure I found the time to call Christin today. We had much to discus. Finding Alphonso, our best friend, our brother, our wing man, needed to become our number one priority. In our younger days, when we all moved to federal Way Wa, not knowing what the road in front of us would lead, we were inseparable.

 

Christin

I guess you could say it was like any other day.

I woke up to the nagging “beep,beep,beep” of the alarm. I hit snooze twice. Let’s face it, 2 more minute to sleep is priceless when you had been up since 1am working on an English paper. After talking myself into getting up, reluctantly, I did.

Now comes the hard part. I have to wake up my kids, Kaidon and Kharizma. Kharizma not so hard. Kaidon impossibly hard. They got up and got ready and I took them to school. They say it gets easier as they get older. But as a mother of an 11-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl, I assure you that is a big fat lie.

After dropping them off at school, I feel a sense of accomplishment. One thing down, 50 more to go. As I’m driving home, I find myself daydreaming about margaritas on the beach. That’s just gonna have to wait. I open the front door to find my cats meowing at me. Apparently their food bowl is not abundantly full as they prefer. First things first, fill the damn bowl so they will stop yelling at me. The bowl is filled.

I have exactly one hour to make to my first class and all I really want to do is to go back to bed. I jump into the shower and get dressed. Throw my daily eggs and bacon on the griddle while I throw some makeup on my wrinkles that are starting to show. I look in the mirror and think “this is good as it gets”. I guess when you are 35 years old, you dream about the body and non-wrinkly face you had at 21. Those days are dead and gone.

I grab my backpack, purse, water bottle, sunglasses, keys, and oh is there something else I can’t remember? No, just old age. I jump in the jeep and head to school. Now you might be thinking “aren’t you kind of old to be going to college”? My answer: Well, I had two kids under the age of 3 by the time I was 24 years old. I had to put my dreams on hold. AND just so you know, to my delight, there are people MUCH older than me in college. Thank goodness. So I spend the next 5 hours at school. Learning about x+y+w=T and how to structure sentences properly using MLA format. Yeah, interesting, I know.

I’m driving home from school, thinking about a nap. But there is no time. I have to pick kids up from school. I pick them and as I am heading home, my phone starts dinging and vibrating. I get home and pull my phone out. A message from Jen popped up “Alphonso, is missing…we have to find him” Instantly, I was transported to a time before kids, before life took over, before the wrinkles began to show. Our old friend was missing.

At one time, it was always us 3. Jen, Alphonso and myself. We were always getting into some trouble, thinking we had good ideas (they were usually not) and most importantly we always had each other’s backs when the world was against us. We had all seen each other at the lowest points in each of our lives.

Now one of us was missing.