By JENNIFER BISHOP

If it takes a village to raise a child, it must take an even larger pool of humanity to raise a child with intensive special needs. I learned that on Easter 2006 when my young son eloped.

I don’t mean “elope” in the fun Las Vegas sense, with all the possibilities of annulling an impulsive decision. The graver meaning of “elopement,” in the developmental disabilities world, is to wander off or get lost.

My son, then five-and-a-half, was the size of a three-year-old and had the sensibility of a one-year-old. Filled with wonder at the world, he could walk or run away from me, and he knew no fear of danger. Outside, he could run laughing into the street or over a precipice, lie down and drink up a mud puddle, or climb into a stranger’s car. Now eight and bigger, he is still like this.

Vigilance takes up a great deal of my energy. But on Easter 2006, as I was fixing dinner in the kitchen, I must have gotten lost in my thoughts for a moment. Maybe I assumed he couldn’t twist the doorknob and walk alone down the steps to the street, simply because he had never done it before.

Chopping onions, I thought I heard him playing in the next room. Instead, he had quietly opened the front door and taken his tall wooden cane– a horse’s head carved on top– for a walk outside.

Sixteen steps down to the sidewalk, twelve more paces over the grass to reach the curb, five heartbeats to squeeze between the parked cars, and he emerged without warning into two lanes of senseless, roaring traffic.

Most parents remember the moment their child learns to walk. With a developmentally delayed child, one lucky enough to walk at all, those first steps unfold slowly and in many stages.

My son took his first barefoot step for a physical therapist at twenty-four months. They both cried. It was months before he could repeat that effort for me. Then we put shoes on him, and he cried in frustration and had to learn all over again how to take steps in such unfamiliar armor. He was at least three before he could wobbly-walk across a room in shoes. Learning to take steps outdoors, where the ground was uneven and daunting, took another year-and-a-half. To this day, although he has mastered walking and running outdoors in shoes, and walking barefoot on the grass, he cannot budge barefoot on concrete. The sensation immobilizes him.

Given all that, I didn’t expect him– shoes, cane, and all– to open the front door, navigate the steps, and enter the street all of a sudden, on Easter. But he did.

Small for five but large for the baby he resembled, with sparse curls and a pale cherubic face, and carrying his tall wooden cane upright, he must have been a heart-stopping sight as he stepped fearlessly out into the street. An impossible sight– like Moses with his staff parting the Red Sea of speeding cars, keeping his eye on the Promised Land, which was the green vale of a park across the street.

Somehow he crossed those two lanes of rushing traffic unharmed.

In a matter of minutes I saw the door ajar and, sick with panic, bolted out of the house to look for him. I spotted him in the distance, in the green valley across the street, surrounded by a circle of eight men holding hands, Ring-Around-the-Rosy style. These young men had been traveling by van to church in their Easter finery when they saw him. Ditching the van in the street, they leapt into action.

Realizing my son would not be safely captured– he was enjoying his freedom and was ready to strike or dodge anyone who might interfere– these eight men formed a human circle around him, holding hands to create a flexible barrier to move with him and keep him safe. In this ingenious and gentle way they were able to contain him, while another man called the police on his cellphone.

Ever since, in my waking and dreaming moments when I relive this scene, my fear and panic is soothed by the sight of these strangers who had figured out, quickly and brilliantly, what they could do and how to do it. I doubt my breathless “thank you” to them that day could have been as gratifying as their own understanding of the profound nature of their rescue.