Editor's note: Theresa Walsh Giarrusso is on vacation. This column originally ran July 30, 2006.

I really thought we would find him right away —- within seconds, definitely within a minute. He sneaks off all the time. He's a wanderer —- on the playground, at friends' houses. But he always turns up.

Four minutes after my 3-year-old son disappeared, I stopped searching for his upright head and shoulders in the pool and started looking for a much grimmer sight —- his little body floating in the 3-feet-deep water.

I was trying to remain calm, but I couldn't help thinking, "This is how my child's life was going to turn out?" Would he die doing something that was supposed to be fun?

Minutes earlier, I had watched him climb through a tunnel half-flooded with water at the Mountain Park Aquatic Center. I didn't think I could fit through the tunnel, so I hustled around the water jungle gym to meet him when he emerged on the other side.

As I reached the other side of the tunnel, I darted my eyes toward the front of the pool to check on my 5-year-old daughter (she was safe), and then I cut my eyes back to the tunnel. Why hadn't he come out? I leaned over to see if he had made a friend and was just sitting in the cool tunnel, but it was empty.

I was less than 2 feet from him when he disappeared. I was in the pool. I wasn't gabbing with my friends. I was completely concentrating on following my two children around the pool and making sure they were safe. How could he have gotten away?

At the Mountain Park pool, water squirts from pipes and fountains. It's dumped from overhead bins. It's splashed in all directions, making it very hard to see. The pool is mostly shallow water, but at the far end is an area for the older kids. It has two high water slides with deeper splash pools at the bottom and a lazy river that's about waist deep on an adult with strong currents that pushes swimmers around.

I yelled to my two mom friends that I couldn't find him. We all started spinning around, scanning the crowds of children.

I tried to tell myself to remain calm, that we would find him playing nearby. I comforted myself saying that at least my daredevil child had on the bright blue and orange life vest I had made him wear.

If he had floated out toward the deeper end at least it would keep him upright.

Two minutes and no sign of him. Tears had started to well up. I told the lifeguard closest to us that my 3-year-old boy was missing, describing the life vest.

Meanwhile, my daughter was crying and yelling, "Find my brother. Where's my brother?" My girlfriends had the presence of mind to collect our other children onto the sidewalk.

By then I was convinced he wasn't in the shallow end of the pool. I started looking toward the deeper end, toward that river with currents. Last summer, we watched a small child pulled out of that deeper end and a crowd of lifeguards bending down over the child, giving CPR we assumed. We heard the ambulances screaming as they raced to the pool. I left that day thanking God that it hadn't been my child.

Today, was it going to be my child? I started to think what if he had taken off the vest? What if the current was too strong for him even with the vest and he had been forced under?

I was heading toward the deeper part of the pool to search when I saw my little guy on the sidewalk by the water slides standing with a different lifeguard. I ran as quickly as I could through the water to grab him. I cried and held him and kissed him. The lifeguard wasn't very specific about where he had been. I think he was just happy to have someone claim the little guy.

My son's version of what happened during those 4 1/2 minutes gradually came out through the day. He had simply walked out of the pool behind my back as I waited for him to come out of the tunnel.

He followed the sidewalk over to the big-kid waterslides and stood in a crowd watching the kids fly down the tubes.

And there he stood for 4 1/2 minutes screeching with joy while I was panicking less than 15 feet away.

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> Theresa Walsh Giarrusso lives with her husband and three children in Gwinnett County.

ajcmomania@gmail.com