She's My Little Runaway

Hasn’t every kid at some point in time decided they were going to run away?  To be honest I don’t remember going through it myself, but I have heard stories from friends, and I kind of recall my sister Megan deciding she was going to leave at some point. A few weeks ago, Sonya decided she was done with this place.  

We were arguing about something.  Who knows what?  She wasn’t listening to me, throwing attitude my way and I was apparently annoying her.  It's been a trend around here lately.  I'm fairly certain that this is just a small glimpse into the teen years.  She was outside with her sisters pouting for a bit, but then she came in and went straight to her room for about five minutes.  I wasn't sure what she was doing in there until she came out to the kitchen to grab a pear from the fruit bowl and took it back to her room.  It was then that I realized what was going on.  

I walked over to her room and stood in the doorway where I found her packing up a small backpack.  I'm not sure what she had put in there, but I knew there was one pear!  She was smart enough to bring sustenance.   

"Whatcha doing?" I asked, trying my best not to break into giggles.

"I'm running away," she told me.  She was also doing her best not to laugh, because she knew that she wasn't going anywhere and she was being silly, but she was out to prove a point dammit!

"Oh.  Huh.  Where are you going?"  I asked.

"That's not something you need to know right now," she indignantly replied.  I assumed she wasn't telling me because she didn't know where she was going herself.  

"Well, that's too bad," I said.  " You are going to miss out on movie night tonight and the special surprise we are taking you guys to tomorrow."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Ok, well, I still love you and I'm sad that you're leaving," I told her.  "You are welcome to come back anytime you want."

She didn't say anything to me, so I left the room and let her continue.

It was then that the wonder twins came in the house and became curious as to what was going on.  

"What's sissy doing?" Lana asked.

"She's running away," I informed them.  

"Where is she going?!" They asked.

"I don't know," I said.  

They tried to go talk to her and find out her plans, but she wasn't giving anything up.  Then she marched out of her bedroom with her bag over her shoulder and headed out the door. She did manage a "bye" toward us over her shoulder as she walked out into the evening.
Keep in mind that it is around 5pm and starting to get dark and all of my girls are very much afraid of the dark.  I had a feeling she wasn't going far.  

The little girls ran over to the window to see where she had gone and reported that she was just sitting on the porch swing out front.   Lana started thinking about life without Sonya and asked,

"Hey mom! What are you going to do with her room?"

"Lana, she's not really going anywhere.  Don't worry about it," I told her.  

"She's leaving, she's leaving!!" They yelled.  

Apparently,  Sonya wasn't up for being watched so she decided to walk away in the hopes of making it look more real.  Lana bought it.  

"If Sonya really does leaves, I get to have her desk right?" She asked.  

"Lana...."  I gave her the 'that's enough' look.  Although I can't say I didn't laugh about that one later.  

I wasn't really concerned that she was really going far, but then I did start to worry that she might try and walk to one of her friends' houses.  Luckily that was about the time that Andy came home from running some errands.  He had run into Sonya in the driveway and she told him of her plans to run away.  He took the same approach I did and told her that was too bad, but wished her luck.  Look at us being on the same parenting page!  I gave me the rest of the story when he walked in the house.  

I continued to make dinner and let her go for a few minutes, but send Andy over to look for her out the window.  He couldn't see her anywhere so, okay, I started to worry.  I sent him out to see if he could glimpse her walking down the street. He started calling for her and didn't get a response but then found her just hiding behind one of our cars.  It was obvious she had no intention in going anywhere, just wanted to get a little attention.  I guess it did work for a bit.  

Andy coaxed her inside where she went directly to her room.  I heard her crying but he managed to hash things out with her. He's good like that.  Sometimes she and I butt heads so his intervening usually helps smooth things over.   I only hope it's this easy in six years from now.  She didn't want to go anywhere, and we worked things out, which was good for us.  Not so much to Lana's liking though.  She was really hoping for her own room with a desk.  Next time, Lana.