Sometimes all it takes is seconds.

Parents of small children know how they can suddenly disappear, only to emerge unharmed across a crowded store or park seconds later - a scare that eventually goes away.

But for some, those seconds can last a lifetime.

Mikera Balsinger wishes she didn't know that despair.

She wishes her son Jaden had never wandered out the front door of their apartment in the few seconds it took her to walk into a bathroom.

The boy - a 3-year-old developmentally delayed toddler with a fixation on opening doors and a fascination for bright lights - was hit by a car and killed on a darkened State Street early on Dec. 5. He had run less than 500 feet from his mother and their normal morning routine.

Now, more than eight months later, Mikera is trying to find her way without Jaden, trying to get over what everyone - family, friends, and the Boise police - characterize as a "horrible accident."

"(Jaden) was my life. My life revolved around him, and he was just taken away like that?" the 21-year-old said last week, brushing tears out of her eyes as she sat on her mother's couch.

"Jaden blessed so many people. ... I really have to keep that in the back of my head when I think about being sad. I am just so lucky to have had him for the time that I did. I guess God needed him back."

A BIG DAY

Dec. 5 was a big day for Jaden Pearce. It was his second day in a special program for developmentally delayed preschoolers at Pierce Park Elementary School.

He had celebrated his third birthday two days earlier, and he was excited about his new friends, new teachers and a new backpack.

"We were all excited," Mikera said.

She woke her son at about 6:30 a.m., and they both got ready for the day - mom for her job at a local office and Jaden for school.

Jaden had eaten and was dressed and ready to go. Mikera went outside to start her car on the cold morning just before 7:30 a.m., and went back inside to fix her hair.

One second Jaden was with her, the next, he was gone.

LIVING WITH JADEN

Both Mikera and Peggy Beer, her mother and Jaden's grandmother, say Jaden was a loving, happy boy who communicated in his own way.

He could make sounds - he liked to hear his voice echo - but he couldn't speak. He was able get his thoughts across to people by leading people or smiling.

"He never said a word. He did certain things to tell us when he was hungry or if he needed something," Mikera said. "Jaden would grab your hand and take you there or make a certain sound to let us know what he wanted."

"He was such a joy. He never had to say anything," Beer added. "He was really social and loving. We all felt very protective of him.

"There was something that got people's attention about Jaden. He was so happy. He never cried, never was selfish."

He loved to open and shut doors. Front doors. Closet doors. Cabinet doors. Whatever he could find.

"(Jaden) was obsessed with doors. That was his thing - he would always grab my hand and take me to the doors for me to open it for him," Mikera said. "They even have his handprint (painted) on the door of his old preschool."

Jaden had opened doors in the apartment before, but never tried to run outside, his mother said. The boy did slip out the front door at his grandmother's house one time last summer, when Beer went to get him a glass of water. But she corralled the toddler a few seconds later.

When police searched the apartment after the accident, they found all the doors - except for the front door - had safety knobs on them. The front door had a flip handle, not a knob, and though it didn't have a safety knob, it did have a deadbolt.

Both women said Jaden couldn't get to the deadbolt, and it was locked most of the time. But that morning, with mother and son about to leave, it was unlocked.

Jaden was mesmerized by bright lights - like the lights of a car on a dark winter morning.

"We would try to keep him away from stuff like TV," Mikera said. "He would get so excited. He would tune you out if there was anything with bright lights around."

He liked to turn the TV on and off so much that Mikera taped over the TV buttons to discourage him.

Jaden also liked to run. It took him 18 months to begin to walk, but he mastered running a short time later, Beer said. "He and I used to play run," she said. "It was all fun with him."

"You can't really discipline him or yell at him about it because he just didn't understand," Mikera said.

Patrick Pearce, Jaden's father, did not live with Mikera and Jaden. He told police that Mikera was a very attentive mother. He told investigators that Jaden loved to open doors and run really fast. Pearce told police he often asked his mother or sister to come along when he was with Jaden. If he let go, the toddler would take off - and the boy was fast.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, IT WAS NOBODY'S FAULT

When Mikera heard the front door close, she called Jaden's name, and then ran outside.

Her son was nowhere to be found. She turned right as she left her apartment and started looking at other doors in the complex.

"My first instinct was to look for another door," Mikera said. "I was running at all the doors. If I had just went left ..."

That's the way Jaden went - left, where a sidewalk and parking lot leads to State Street.

When she didn't see Jaden, Mikera yelled for her older brother Terry, who also lived in the apartment and was asleep at the time. He joined her outside while Mikera called her mom on her cell phone.

Mikera isn't sure how long they looked, but she remembers watching Terry sprint to the street.

When he saw a car pulled over, Terry told police, he knew something was wrong.

Boise police spent a month investigating the case and determined that their initial analysis was correct - Jaden's death was an accident. Neither Mikera nor the driver of the car was charged.

Detectives determined the driver, a man on his way to work, was not going faster than the 45 mph limit on State Street as he passed a telephone pole next to the Nampa Floors and Interiors building, just 446 feet away from the apartment.

It was still dark - about half an hour before the 8:02 a.m sunrise that day.

The driver, whose name is redacted from police reports, told police: "A kid walked out from behind a pole. I tried to stop, but it was too late! It was dark, and there wasn't anything I could do."

The driver moved the toddler off the road so he wouldn't be hit by another car. A female nurse passed by about the same time Mikera arrived. Both women attempted CPR until paramedics arrived.

The nurse told police the toddler was not breathing and she could feel no pulse, but she did chest compressions while Mikera tried to breathe life back into her son.

Jaden was pronounced dead at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center less than an hour later.

HIS LIFE WAS HER LIFE

Doctors were never able to diagnose the exact nature of Jaden's disability, but they estimated he had the mental development of a 10-month-old boy, Mikera said.

Jaden was consistently slow to develop, she said. He was slow to roll over, and he walked later than most kids. Doctors thought he could see and hear well enough, but the testing was complicated by the fact that he couldn't talk.

Mikera spent much of her time outside of work getting help for Jaden, and she found some through Idaho Health and Welfare programs. Many weeks, Jaden went to four therapy sessions - including speech and occupational therapy. Beer took every Friday off work so she could help with the sessions, in which a motor skills therapist came to her house. It was a lot of work.

"We spent every day concerned about Jaden," Mikera said. "Even when therapy was done, everything we did in our everyday lives we worked with him."

In the days and weeks following the accident, Mikera "tuned out." She spent weeks on the couch at her mom's house, alternating between not believing she had lost her son and trying to face her grief.

"I didn't want to go anywhere; I didn't want to do anything. I didn't eat. I couldn't go to my apartment," she said. "(Jaden) was everything to me."

When she eventually returned to work last winter, she found that sitting at a computer allowed her mind to wander too much.

"I would get really bad flashbacks. I still get really bad flashbacks," she said. "I couldn't stop thinking about things. (Life) felt kind of pointless."

TRYING TO LIVE HER NEW LIFE

Mikera quit her office job and tried to figure out what to do. She found work caring full time for an elderly woman with dementia. It has helped her to help care for someone else, she said.

"There are days now when I feel like I can go on," she said.

Beer is coping in a different way. She took responsibility for Jaden's roadside memorial, a large white cross and a framed portrait of Jaden next to the telephone pole where he died.

Beer stops every Friday to water the plants and make sure everything still looks nice.

"That's the place where he went to heaven," Beer said. "I believe it makes people draw compassion they might not have had. I've had people pull off the street and talk to me about it. People have left letters, saying they are praying for us."

At first, the memorial brought back too many memories for Mikera, even though she has moved from the apartment.

"I really didn't want it at first," she said. "But I think people look at it and remember him. (It feels like) everybody really does care."

Patrick Orr: 373-6619