What once was lost . . .

There are few aggravations in life that I hate more than losing or misplacing stuff. Of course in the grand scheme of things, I recognize there are calamities of greater import – floods and famine, to name but two. But in my little world of personal disasters, losing something gets the prize. For one thing, it pushes all of my OCD buttons, so that I am flailing around, tracing and retracing my steps, opening cupboards and drawers, emptying out purses and backpacks, all the while muttering to myself.”How could you be so stupid, careless, lame-brained, etc?” My daughter will testify to the occasions when I came into her bed room after she had gone to bed and riffled through her drawers in search of a missing sports bra or a shin guard. “Mom, I am trying to go to sleep.” “Forget it mom! It doesn’t matter.” All of this falling on deaf ears as I admonished her to just ignore me, assuring her that I’d only be a minute and would be quiet as a mouse.

My most recent case of loss followed by self-flagellation occurred when I got home from a 12 hour flight from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands in February only to discover that I had lost my little jewelry case, at least I thought I had. It was a small flowered Clinique bag, designed I suppose to hold a lip stick, a car key and a tissue, but I had found it the perfect size for the two necklaces and three pair of earrings that I felt I needed to take along. This was a scuba diving trip, so the clothing requirements consist of swimsuits in the water, fleece on the boat, and sun dresses for evening wear. When packing for the return flight, I made a conscious decision to put my jewelry in my back pack rather than my checked bag.
I flew home on a red eye and in the course of the next twelve hours, was in and out of the back pack numerous times, pulling out pillows and Advil, books and granola bars, creating the perfect opportunity to dislodge my little flowered jewelry case. The jewelry was not expensive but that isn’t the same as saying it wasn’t valuable, because to me it was. Every piece had a story and most were acquired while traveling: two pair of earrings were from Shanghai; a necklace that was made entirely of seed pods found on Little Corn Island, off the coast of Nicaragua; another necklace made of silver beads and jasper Fred acquired from a local guide in Death Valley. Also in the bag were my opal earrings which I have worn for nearly thirty years, a gift one Christmas from Fred and dad.

For five months I have been grinding my teeth over this debacle. I missed all of these pieces but refused to seek out replacements, determined to punish myself appropriately for my carelessness. Last weekend I started on a purge of the “travel closet” where I keep our suitcases, back packs, and all the little bottles of shampoo and lotion, mosquito repellent and sun block that I tuck into our bags when we take a trip. Some things made their way to the bag destined for the Goodwill and others “did not pass go” but went right into the trash. I opened every suit case and back pack, clearing out stray socks and a hairbrush, Purell and toothpaste, as well as boarding passes and ball point pens. And, miracle of miracles, floating around inside my back pack was the little flowered case with all the missing jewelry!

I was elated to say the least. I put the opal earrings on and haven’t taken them off since. This great finder’s event put me in mind of a number of other times when I have been sure that I lost something only to discover it, sometimes years later. When I was in law school, the large jade stone from the ring I wore constantly disappeared. I bought that ring in Peurto Villarta at a time when I still thought I should ask Fred for permission to spend $40 on a piece of jewelry. I was sure I must have lost it in the parking lot and enlisted my friends to help with the search which turned out to be futile. At home that night when I was unloading my book bag, I found it. No doubt I slammed my hand just right against some heavy legal tome and dislodged it and it fell into the book bag.

On another occasion, I thought that I had lost a necklace of Venetian trading beads that I fell in love with in the little resort gift shop in Antigua. Naïve as I was in those days, I still was aware there were no bargains to be had at the resort gift bar. Still these were the beads that I wanted and so I bought them. Once the exchange rate was sorted out, I think that once again I ventured into the $40.00 range. Though by this time, I by-passed the permission step.

I wore those beads a lot – both for work and casually. They were predominantly red and blue and graduated, so that the center bead was larger than all of the others. The summer that my parents moved over here from Spokane, I made monthly trips back and forth to help with the packing and of course, I wore the beads. Once my parents arrived in Olympia, I never saw them again. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them – had they fallen off at a rest stop? Surely not. I would have heard them hit the floor if they had come apart. My mother felt badly about it and found a similar looking set of beads from a museum gift store catalogue, for I am sure twice what I had paid for the original. They were nice but they simply weren’t the same.
After my mother died, I found them in what seemed to me a very unlikely place. When we visited my parents in Spokane, one of Kate's favorite playthings was my old doll buggy with a large doll that Katie called "grandma baby" - a name that defies logic unless you understood that this doll, that once was mine, now lived with grandma. The doll buggy and grandma baby were one of the last things to be loaded for the move, as they had provided a welcome distraction for a seven year old while the rest of us were boxing and packing. So now, several years later as I was going through things in my parent’s home, sending some directly to the dumpster and others to the Good Will, I came upon grandma baby and the buggy and a miscellany of odds and ends including a plastic bag that appeared to be full of dust rags. I was on the verge of consigning them to the dumpster when I paused to look inside, and there, quite incredulously, I found the little jewelry box with my favorite beads.

I could go on about my amazing luck in finding things; or maybe, it is my amazing knack for thinking that something is lost that really isn’t. I feel as if I should be taking some lesson out of this. That perhaps, if I were able to channel Saint Anthony he would tell me that from now on, I am on my own! That he has saved me and my stuff for the last time. Maybe if I really tried harder, I would become a “place for everything and everything in its place” kind of person. But I know better than to hold my breath on that idea. Maybe what you do with good luck is just be grateful and let go of it. Just relax and move on. It is a tempting notion. Still, on this next trip, I have a plan for my jewelry case – I have pasted an address label to the inside and plan to pin the case to the inside of one of the many zip pockets in my back pack that I rarely get into! That should do it and I can leave the old hair shirt hanging in the closet when I get home. Provided, of course, that once I get where I am going, I can remember where I have hidden it!