My Charlie Brown Day

I was having the Charlie Browniest of days last Sunday.

I could do nothing right. I embarrassed myself. I was a fool.

Even my dog had better things to do than to love me.

To cheer myself up, I got on my bike and headed from our apartment in the Windemere hills down Bollinger to the Iron Horse Trail.

Not even the long-awaited nice weather could brighten my spirits.

 Just past Central Park, I came to an intersection where a man on his bike was in apparent distress.

Even though he had a helmet and sunglasses on, I could tell he was panicked from the urgency in his voice as he called out, “Abbie! Abbie!”  to no avail.

As I approached, I overheard him telling another cyclist that his daughter was riding her bike ahead of him and they got separated.

I thought of stopping to ask this poor dad if I could help, but didn’t. I didn’t offer a word of condolence,  rotten, self-absorbed person that I apparently am.

As he continued on the Iron Horse trail toward Dublin, I headed the opposite way toward Walnut Creek.

The trail gets prettier and prettier as you hit Danville then really pretties up in Alamo. That’s my favorite part, my own personal oasis. I like to pretend I live in one of the gabillion-dollar homes there.

But I didn’t get that far.

 Just before Alamo, I saw her. A sweet little blond-haired child with misery and doom on her face barreled toward me, riding a too-small purple bike she had to peddle bow-legged.

Somehow, I just knew it was her.

I u-turned my bike and caught up to her. “Excuse me?” I said, tapping her shoulder as I approached. “Did you lose your daddy, sweetheart?”

She stopped her bike and turned to me. Her helmeted head nodded. “Yes,” she sobbed.

At that point we became one. Her misery was my misery.

She was a child of the universe, the everychild we should all watch out for. She was as much my child as she was the lost child inside me.

“It’s okay,” I told her, giving her a quick hug. “I saw your dad looking for you. We’ll go find him together.”

“He ditched me!” she cried.

“No,” I assured her. “I saw him. He was very worried and has been trying to find you. I know it’s scary to be lost, but we’ll find him. I promise.”

I grabbed my cell phone and handed it to her. Fortunately, she knew his number by heart.

She cried and cried into the phone. At a break between tears, I took the phone from her to arrange a spot to meet her dad near Lunardi’s in Danville.

As we headed toward Lunardi’s, I thought I’d keep her distracted from her distress by asking questions. “You live in Danville?”

She nodded yes, so I asked, “Do you know where you live?”

“Yes,” she said, panting, sweat slithering down her reddened cheeks.

 “Then why didn’t you ride home?” I asked.

She looked at me as we pedaled, side by side on the trail, completely serious. “Well, I know where it is. I just don’t know how to get there.”

Sounded to me like she was describing the mystery of happiness.

I had to laugh. I asked her age, and she told me she was eight years old.

As we stopped at an intersection, I showed her the photo of my kids on my cell phone. “You’d like my daughter, Jenna, I told her. She’s 10. And her brother Drew is 12.”

I told her my son used to get lost in Costco when he was little, pretty much every time his father took him there. That made her laugh.

As we cycled toward her dad, Abbie confessed to me, “I thought I’d never see my home again. Nobody stopped to help me but you.” She said she’d been lost over an hour.

I wanted to hug her with all of my heart.

After about twenty more minutes on the trail, peddling as fast as we could, finally, she spotted him.

I stopped a moment to watch Abbie’s dad give her the biggest hug, then headed off to give them their privacy.

Abbie was just eight years old. Maybe her parents once told her not to talk to strangers and that’s why she didn’t ask for help sooner.

It’s a reminder to all of us. Before taking your kids anywhere—to a store, on vacation, on a bike trail—tell them what to do should they get lost.

Tell them it’s okay to ask a stranger or store owner or security guard for help and that it’s okay to borrow a phone to call for help.

As I rode away, I heard Abbie’s sweet little voice call out to me. “Thank you for helping me,” she yelled.

But it’s you, Abbie, that I need to thank. For helping me recover from the tornado of gloom swirling inside me.

For making me feel a little less lost myself.