Member-only story
The Day I Lost My Child in Charles de Gaulle Airport
Traveling with children is never dull, and I’m thankful for that
“Un Coca, s’il vous plaît.”
I heard the timid voice from the seat behind me, followed by a flight attendant handing over a miniature can of Coke.
The accent was almost perfect, the delivery immediate and flawless. It was only five words, five words in the course of a day that was supposed to span nearly half the globe, one that included two delayed flights out of Barcelona, two missing pieces of luggage, and an impossible connection time in Paris.
It was five words and in less than two hours, I would lose that little person speaking French in Charles de Gaulle International Airport: my 11-year-old son.
Sprinting back and forth along Terminal 2E, I yelled his name over and over as the heads of nervous and concerned travelers followed me from their moving sidewalks. “Oliver!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “OLIVER!!!” hoping my voice would carry into every nook and cranny of this huge terminal.
But there was no Oliver to be seen, no Oliver in the corridors that we’d just raced through moments earlier, no Oliver on the moving sidewalks he loves to race up and down whenever he has the chance.
