I remember my first memory as hearing myself screaming. The warm apple core is still in my hands. I squeezed as hard as possible, and brown mush poured out from my fist.
The memory that I have is not verbal. Only physical sensations are all I can remember. My car seat is strapped to me. I’m strapped into my car seat. My tears are mixed with sweat and I am hot. But nobody is there. I shout as loudly as I can. The only thing I can do to stop the car is to kick the seat forward and smash my head into the headrest.
Years later, as I walk out the door into our driveway, I see the same face behind the dirty glass on the green van. My 5-year-old daughter is screaming just like me. I feel both guilt and love when we look at each other. Her pale, small face is contorted with fear and her dark curls around the edge. At first, I didn’t know why she was in the car. It’s been a while since I looked for her. I never thought I would find her in this place.
All I want to do is get her. She screams and clings to me, as she lunges in my arms. Her slender body clamps down on me. Legs wrapped around my waist and arms around my neck are so tight it is hard to breath.
She tells me, “I am so sorry. I did not know that you were there.” “I’m sorry. “I love you.” “I’m sorry.”
Her sobs become a soft whimper when I place her on the couch. With her face wet and beating heart against my chest, she is pressed to my neck. Sitting on the couch, I rock her and kiss her as if she were a little baby. She buries her face in me and sighs.
For a very long time, we remain intertwined. I stroke her face and hair, whispering repeatedly my apologies. Her body becomes slack and her breathing gets deeper as she falls asleep. As I gaze at my child sleeping, love and relief mix with shame, gratitude and horror.
Each summer, headlines are filled with stories of infants and toddlers who have died in cars that were too hot. Parents who drove their babies to daycare, but forgot, then left them in the car to cook to death while sitting in an air-conditioned office. In one car, I heard about the scratch marks left by a toddler who desperately tried to get out. I will always remember the image of a child in panic clawing desperately at windows and doors.
These parents were reckless and I found them disgusting. Who would forget their child? They should be sent to prison for life. They should know they are murderers every day. Then I thought, they should be punished until their death. I thought they didn’t deserve parents.
This disgust and judgement I now directed at myself. I did not deserve to become a mother. I wasn’t worthy. I felt as if my gut was being repeatedly punched, and gasping for breath, while my mind replayed the possible outcomes if this had been a hot day in summer. It could have made for a horrific headline. My baby could have been killed, I would have been charged for murder, and my children left behind. My mother was unfit. What could I possibly have done? Why didn’t I pay more attention? I hated me. I felt like a monster.
Noheatstroke.org reports that every year, since the website began analysing media reports in 1998, on average, 38 children die of heatstroke each year after they are left unattended in hot vehicles. Jan Null, a meteorologist who is co-author of a study that has been widely cited about the rapid rise in temperature inside cars even at moderate temperatures outside, runs this website. He also surveys media reports to find out why these kids were left. About 20% of the 940 kids who have died from 1998 to 2022 in hot cars were left by their caregivers. It is a shocking and horrifying number. Most deaths, however, were accidents, as caregivers forgot children in 53% of cases, or kids gained access to cars on their own (25%) Some cases were not determined.
We still judge 78% of these cases as harshly, if not more so than we do parents who deliberately leave their children. It is so hard to accept that this could ever happen to you.
There’s no way to tell how many deaths are the result of parents making a tragic error and how many come from parents being truly negligent. A mom from Florida accidentally left her son, 11 months old, in the car and then went to work. She was accused of aggravated murder after he died. We are all flawed and capable of grave errors and tragic consequences for those we love. This mother could have easily been me.
Pure luck is the reason my daughter’s still alive and that I am not facing charges of manslaughter. It was luck that it wasn’t summer. It was luck that I found my daughter in time. My daughter had probably been in the car 30 minutes when I discovered her. That’s long enough to allow temperatures to rise dangerously if this was a hot summer day.
My daughter stayed in the car that evening, instead of getting out with her brothers and sisters. My daughter was likely carrying things into the house and thinking of getting her siblings ready for bed. I may have been checking items off my mental checklist. I had not counted heads as I usually do. One, two, three, four, five, six. Shame swirls in my stomach like a tide, pulling me down. My stomach turns when I realize how terrified she was, screaming at me from a couple of steps away. While she was trying to grab my attention, I had read a book with her two sisters.
As usual, when I entered her bedroom to tuck in my daughter and she wasn’t present, I assumed she had hid herself. It seemed like I was looking for her every day. Under beds, pillows and blankets on couches and under bed covers or in kitchen and closet cabinets she would hide. She would sometimes not come when I called her, and this worried me but delighted her. When I looked for her at first, I assumed she was trying to put off bedtime. When she did not come out after several minutes of calling her in the universally annoyed parental voice, I became scared. I became frightened when my calls to her became shrill and I shook with fear. She was not in the home or backyard and knew to stay away from the door.
It never occurred to me that she may not have ever gotten out. Maybe she had trouble unbuckling her seatbelt. She may have been taking her time, or even fallen asleep.
Seven years passed before I spoke to my daughter again about this incident. It was a topic I didn’t want to discuss. I did not want to traumatize her. Also, I did not want to traumatize myself. It was too painful to watch the look of pain on her face. It was too painful to see the pain on her face.
The thought of the horrors that could have happened was overwhelming. I felt a sense of relief that nothing bad had occurred, but also a deep fear.
My daughter was still in middle school when I decided to finally talk about the incident with her. The memory was etched into my daughter’s cells. She had scrunchies on her wrists and ate an absurd number of olives.
In another car in another country I remembered screaming. It was a question of whether she’d grow up feeling the same unease, not knowing why, that I might leave and never return. My own experiences are hazy, with edges that blur and colors muted. My parents never knew about my experience. It’s not something I will ever talk about with my parents. However, I was able to talk with my child.
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