Like most people, I was shocked to hear about the boy falling in the gorilla’s enclosure and the subsequent death of the gorilla. Shocking and horrifying on so many levels.

I’m not sure of the whole story and what I read it seemed like the boy went through a number of barriers to end up with the gorilla. I wondered the time lapse – how long did it take? But I know from experience that things happen in a very short amount of time and that’s why I have some empathy for his mom.

When Kathryn was about 2 and a half or so, she and I were in Toys R Us. I turned to put something on the shelf and when I turned back she was gone. I looked around and didn’t see her anywhere. I called her name, no answer. I immediately walked toward an employee who via her walkie-talkie, basically shut down the whole store. An employee went to the doors, everyone else stopped what they were doing to look for her. As I stood answering questions the employee was asking about her clothes etc., in comes Kathryn from OUTSIDE the store holding the hand of a woman.  Kathryn ran over and the woman follows and tells me she found her out on the sidewalk looking for me. The woman hesitated and I was pretty sure I was in for a big lecture so I preemptively thanked her and the employee and walked away with Kathryn.  I know she wanted to share a few thoughts with me.

Making sense with a child that age is difficult and the best I could gather from her was she hid from me but when she came back, I had gone for help and so she ran out thinking I left her. Left her. That stings that your child would think you would leave her but that’s a child’s thinking for you. The whole episode – 3 minutes. 3 of the longest minutes of my life. To this day, I remember the fast action of those Toys R Us employees and have nothing respect for the way they are trained.

That was a moment in time, one episode. So am I a bad mother?

Another time, as we stood in the Reptile House at the National Zoo looking at something, my stepson Matthew wandered off with another family. Everyone looks similar from behind when you are small. We realize he was gone almost immediately. I stood in place with the other kids while Mike made went to find him. Before Mike came back, Matthew appeared asking “Where’d you guys go?” Had he looked around he would have realized we didn’t go anywhere!

That was a moment in time, so are we bad parents?

Each year we hear of people forgetting their kids in the car when they go to work and the unthinkable happens, the child dies. It is easy to ask what kind of parent would forget their child but we are human and it happens. A moment in time. Do someone’s actions in that one slice of their life, define who they really are?

The zoo incident offers us lots of lessons and lots of discussion points – whether zoos should exist, what else could have been done, what’s the parent role in it all.  All valid points. Nothing will bring back that beautiful gorilla and nothing anyone does will ever provide “justice” for his death. And reversely, time won’t ever erase the fright and guilt his mom feels today, because no matter what you do to her or say about her, she is beating herself up again and again.

Doesn’t matter what his mom has said in public, in private I believe she is reliving it from realizing the child was gone, watching him in the enclosure and then the death of the gorilla.

So much has been said and written about the boy’s mom (not sure if she was the only parent there) and I’m not trying to be”Heidi Highroad” here, but can we really take the worst moments of someone’s life and use them to define who they really are? Is his mother really the worst parent, based on a moment in time?