Last week I mentioned the much publicized (locally, at least) missing Western Washington University student, Dwight Clark, and as of this morning Dwight is still missing and the police are baffled.

I have to say that I’m haunted by this incident. I can’t stop thinking about it. I check the Bellingham Herald website several times a day, even though I know that they don’t update it very often.

I’m haunted because I have a son, and while it may be that I feel this more acutely because my son is about to become a teenager, with all the gains in independence and risky behavior that accompany this coming of age, the truth is that scenarios like missing children, or children getting hit by cars…um, not scenarios…nightmares like this are always hiding out in some dark, scary corner of a parent’s consciousness.

It’s been enough, over the years, to make me occasionally wonder, semi-seriously, why the HELL we ever decide to bring children into the world. I know that’s terribly nihilistic, but I assure you that it’s not a common thought, that the thought never lingers long, and that I have no regrets whatsoever about having become a father. Yet the thought does come from time to time.

And yet nothing, it seems to me, comes close to the limbo state that Dwight’s parents, family, and friends find themselves in. They know something has happened, but they don’t know which of the many horrible possibilities has come to pass.

This is the dichotomy of parenthood — unrivaled joy at the miracle of birth on one hand, the terror of harm coming to your child on the other.

Since we humans make the decision to become parents with overwhelmingly more frequency than the alternative, I suppose that unrivaled joy married with our drive as a species to reproduce easily trumps terror.

My thoughts remain with Dwight’s family and friends.