By Shiaw-Ling Lai
They turned and looked around the top floor of the elevator, and I was gone.
Their first-born daughter was nowhere in the mass of moving tweed suit legs or pantyhoses emptying out the elevator, not crying in a corner or hiding behind a pot. My panicked immigrant parents searched and scoured the San Francisco Hyatt for me, where we were supposed to be visiting the revolving tower.
Later, it was revealed that I had been blithely heading out the front door. A keen security guard noticed had my suspicious activity and picked me up on lost charges. He, or she, took me to whatever Lost and Found box they had for little children where my parents eventually found me. This happened when I was two.
When I was old enough to understand stories, my mother told this story to me quite often. In the half-playing, half-possessed logic of a child I asked, "Ma-Ma, did you find me?"
"Of course," My mother would answer in her soft-spoken Mandarin. I was relieved. I might not have been found, then I wouldn't be who I was."If we didn't find you, how would you be here?" She asked in return. My existential fears were always soothed away by her kind smile and comforting voice.
It's one of my most vivid memories of childhood.