the day we lost lulu — Summer of Rove

I’m pretty liberal when it comes to letting my kids explore new places and develop independence at their own pace, block by block, day by day. Growing up in NYC, as I did, they’ve got street smarts — as many as a 4- and 8-year-old can have. Don’t talk to strangers? They know the difference between a chatty fellow straphanger on the A train and a man inviting them to see puppies and candy in his van. Walk ahead of me on the street? Sure; neither has ever set foot in a crosswalk without my ok. Run around the park, far beyond the scope of my gaze? Why not — everyone in the neighborhood does it, and most people are fundamentally kind and good, or at least decent. All of this is what I tell myself. Then came the day in Paris when we lost Lulu.

She was in a snit about something. Sweets? Screen time? Trinkets she wanted but I refused to buy? I don’t remember; what happened next seems to have pushed it from my memory. She said she wished she could have a different Mommy, one who let her do the things she wanted to do. I answered her sharply and reminded her it was my job to make sure she grew up healthy, safe and relatively well-adjusted. Happy wasn’t always going to top my list. Defiant, she kept slipping into shops to look at jewelry and pastries even though I had told her no. I’d go in and order her out, or keep walking to teach her that we wouldn’t always bend to her will. Then we all passed the Rue des Rosiers, a beautiful street in the heart of the city’s old Jewish quarter that’s now filled with shops and restaurants, including Paris’ rumored best falafel. A creperie just a few doors down caught my eye and I told Matthew I’d be right back — I wanted to take a look. It all happened fast from there. Less than a minute later, mentally noting the butter, sugar and lemon crepe that would be mine sometime during this trip, I walked back to him and the kids. Except it was just him and Max. “Where’s Lulu?” I asked. “I told her she could go with you,” he answered. We both stood there, turning in circles, scanning the crowd for a sullen soon-to-be 3rd-grader in a pink and orange dress. He walked down the Rue des Rosiers, figuring she’d missed me at the crepe shop and kept strolling. I stood with Max. Frankly, my heart rate was low. I imagined her ambling down the street preparing to make a case for a Nutella crepe or some pretty earrings she’d seen in a window (her ears aren’t even pierced but she’s intent on growing a collection for “when they are”). I wanted to see if she’d ducked into one of the colorful shops around the little intersection where I stood waiting with Max, parked in his stroller, but I held off, figuring that when Lulu came out of one of them she’d spot me in the street. A few minutes passed, and Matthew came back alone. Then he ran into all those shops she could have wandered into from our starting-off point. Nothing. He took off in a different direction, just in case she’d come back to us but somehow passed us and kept going.

There’s a specific, awful moment when, as a parent, your brain switches from calm and rational (‘there must be a reasonable explanation’) to creeping panic (‘why wouldn’t she have come back by now? is she trying to teach us a lesson? hiding around the corner? doing an 8-year-old version of running away — in Paris?’) Then, if given time and oxygen, it flares into worst-case scenarios. Has the course of our lives been altered by a single horrible mistake we made? Where IS my child? What if…? I realized that Lulu, if in trouble, would ask someone to call me. She’s had my number memorized since age 5. Then my heart sank when I realized it would do her no good; we’d switched over to European SIM cards because they’re cheaper than international roaming on our US plans. I hadn’t given her my European number. She speaks no French, and I didn’t know enough of the language to enlist a solid-looking local to help me find her. I didn’t even know how to call the police in Paris. And if I did, what exactly would I say? Would they understand my mangled attempts at pronouncing the location and time we last saw her? The description of her hazel eyes and bangs and pink sandals? I texted Matthew: “We should call the police.” The message didn’t go through. I started to have a feeling of time grinding to a halt and speeding up simultaneously. My mind jumped to my conversation earlier that day with Lulu, when I’d tried to explain to her about the Roma (also known as Gypsy, though it’s become a controversial term in Europe) woman and child we’d seen begging on that very street. When I was 12, Gypsy children in Italy had tried to steal my father’s wallet from his back pocket while distracting him with a loud burst of chatter and a newspaper shoved in his face. He’d caught the young thief by the wrist and held him up, suspended in the air, until the leather wallet was released. I’d watched the whole thing, shocked and scared, and never forgot it. At the risk of starting a debate about anti-Roma discrimination — which I’m not interested in having — my mind started to go wild with new fears. I drew on my experience as a crime reporter, though every A&E viewer knows this: The first 48 hours are crucial. Every second that passed could make it harder to find Lulu.

After an eternity, Matthew came running toward me. His eyes looked the same way I felt. I barked to him across the throngs of pedestrians, trying to sound authoritative so as not to panic Max, who was agitating about a bee buzzing around his stroller. “Matthew,” I shouted. “We should call the police.” A man 20 feet away pushing his own young child in a stroller stopped and turned around. “Did you lose your daughter?” he asked in a heavy accent. My throat caught as I nodded yes. “I saw her, I saw a little girl crying earlier.” He pointed and began to walk, then run, in that direction, and we followed him. I can’t say how many blocks we went but it was much farther than either us would have guessed. After a good 5-minute run, we got to a fancy leather handbag store. I stepped inside, ready to take Lulu into my arms. But the only person there was a shopkeeper. In broken English, she told us that Lulu had gone with her colleague. “Where is she?!” I demanded, surprised at how angry I sounded to learn she wasn’t sitting here safely, waiting for me. The shopkeeper pointed. We went outside and seconds later we saw them: a lovely young woman, also a store employee, leading Lulu around by the hand. I thanked her profusely. She told me Lulu had given her my phone number and she’d called but gotten voicemail. She told me Lulu did exactly the right thing and came into the shop, crying, telling them she couldn’t find her parents. They’d given her a cup of water to calm her down. I didn’t realize I was weeping until I saw the strange look on Lulu’s face as she stared at me. After our tough morning, I imagine that her relief at being found was mixed with some sort of reassurance at this pure expression of my love for her. Her dad started crying too, as we thanked both strangers for their kindness.

Lulu, in her pink-and-orange dress, inspecting “love locks” on a bridge after our big scare.

In an intense discussion with a peddler as he explained his wares.

Taking in live music on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Looking off at Notre Dame, in the midst of rebuilding from the devastating April fire.

What did I learn from this scary story with a happy ending? I didn’t go out and buy a kiddie leash, or insist that we all stay within arms’ length at all times. I still want her to feel empowered to explore the world without me. I couldn’t get over the fortuitous timing — that at the very moment I’d called out to Matthew on a crowded street, that man had heard me, processed what I was saying, applied it to something he’d seen 20 minutes earlier, then dropped everything to help us. A little voice in my head continued to torment me long after our reunion: What if someone else — the wrong person — had offered to help Lulu? What if it happens again and we aren’t so lucky? But what-ifs have never done me any favors, so I had a glass of rosé and banished them. For now. When I talked to Lulu about lessons we’d learned, some were practical: I would write down my new number and make sure she carried it everywhere on this trip. But the most important, for me, was the reinforcement of my belief that most people everywhere are fundamentally kind and good, or at least decent.