Columns: A knowing heart comes to rescue lost Lovey

Bedtime was approaching for the little girl, but she was in the grips of the deepest, soggiest grief. Her floppy-eared, much-hugged, much-laundered Lovey was missing. Her tears telegraphed an all-points bulletin across the household, upstairs and down for one dog, stuffed, and deaf to her noise.

While the little girl stood in the hallway, eyes glistening and empty arms limp, her mother and father pulled out chairs, tugged back bedspreads, tossed pillows, got on hands and knees to look under sofas and tables.

Then, as the mother gasped for breath between her own tears, it hit her. She had forgotten to pick up Lovey that afternoon. After work, she had gone to the grocery for Thanksgiving fixings, put the groceries in the trunk and driven to her daughter's preschool. She had grabbed the child's lunch bag, her juice cup, her apple decorated with marshmallows and paper feathers so it would resemble a turkey, and the child, who wanted to immediately eat the apple/turkey. The mother had pulled out the marshmallows, which were on toothpicks, so the child wouldn't choke in the carseat. Who wouldn't have overlooked Lovey?

Her husband said, in his understated but excessively logical way, that it was bound to happen. He turned to the little girl and explained in his calmest voice that Lovey was safe at school. When the child's wails hit an even higher note, his face grew cross and his logic went south. He wondered whether there would be somebody at school. At 9 at night. As the chilly winds blew outside, and the child refused every other stuffed animal in the house, as well as a live, gold-colored cat.

The recording that answered the phone at school said that if you had a building emergency you were to call a man named Bob at his home. The mother pondered whether the term building emergency was generous enough to cover household emergencies. She pondered only so long. She called this stranger named Bob.

I tell you this and tell you true.

Bob said he'd be there right away. The family in question, mine, piled into the Jeep like refugees. One child in pajamas and a thrift store parka, still crying. One father whose emotional temperature was so high he refused to put on his jacket. One mother in nightgown, bare legs, red flip-flops and a trench coat.

No ride to school was ever longer.

I scrambled out of the car, ran to the door, looked through the window into utter blackness. I waited and waited until a light suddenly came on at the far end of the hallway. A man was coming closer, dressed in sweat pants that looked too short for him, a T-shirt and running shoes -- the clothes he might have worn if he had been at home in front of the TV.

Bob opened one classroom. No Lovey. He opened another. I looked in my child's cubby. Still no Lovey. I looked over the room, once, twice, turned around, and found Lovey half on his back, paws in the air, atop a bookcase.

Now it was my turn to hug Lovey. Then Bob.

"You have no idea . . ." I began.

Yes, he did. "I've raised six of my own," Bob said. "You can't have an unhappy child."

This saga of Lovey, lost and found, took place just two nights ago. There is no better day to thank Bob than this one. More than a few people would have blown us off that night. There is no better time to ask what taught Bob the importance of recovering the misplaced things of the heart. And no better time to remember how hard it can be, even for an alleged adult, to make peace with those lost things that are never found again.

With Lovey in my arms, the dark was now not so dark, the night not so cold. I slid into my side of the Jeep, up front, reached back and handed Lovey to my daughter.

She put her arms around him. Lovey all but hid her face. "Thank you, Mommy," I heard her say.

We crossed the empty streets of the city, grateful and amazed, only partly because she was asleep by the time we reached home.

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