ROSEMARY HARRIS: I hate to lose things. I know...EVERYONE hates to lose things. But I REALLY hate to lose things. In fact, I'm still looking for things that I lost years ago, because I can't believe that they're not here somewhere - under the bed. In some drawer or jacket pocket that I haven't checked.
I can remember looking for things on moving day - thinking that something misplaced would miraculously reappear as if to say okay we'll stop torturing her now. Or here I am!
I was rewarded for my persistance 2-3 years ago when two necklaces that I'd somehow "lost" FIVE YEARS EARLIER were found in a duffel bag I was about to throw out. It was a miracle.
It was also the event that will probably mean that I'll continue to look for lost things....forever. Someone once said that when you die all your old pets come to greet you. I hope so. Lady, Clyde, Running Fox, Piccadilly, Leon, Tommy and Patrick - hi guys!
With any luck they will be carrying all the gloves, scarves, earrings, ipods, credit cards, umbrellas, wallets, laptops, eyeglasses, keys and pens I've lost when they greet me....
If you keep hunting, all lost things will eventually turn up . . . or at least that is my philosophy on finding the missing stuff. And so, in the firm belief that they must be somewhere, and that they can’t really be gone, I simply keep looking . . . and looking . . . and looking . . . .
ReplyDeleteThey are somewhere..they haven't vanished...that's why we keep looking! finding thos two necklaces was one of the happiest days of my life..they had belonged to my sister who had recently passed away.
ReplyDeleteThat truly makes the necklaces extra-special and finding them even more rewarding . . . .
ReplyDeleteUgh, I don't lose things because I am incredibly anal about things going in their proper place. However, I'm married to a drop it wherever person and I still have to spend time hunting for things.
ReplyDeleteThursday it was the phone handset! So we searched until we found it.
We gave my husband's mother a necklace with a gold charm on it, a girl-shaped paper doll with our first born's name engraved on it. She wore it all the time, never took it off, and was bereft when she went to bed one night and it just wasn't there. YEARS later (after we'd bought a replacement with TWO girl-shaped paper doll charms) she found it in the lining of a coat she was about to pitch. So CHECK LININGS!
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in my house are a pair of huaraches (sandals with old tires for soles) which I have now missed for four summers. I refuse to buy another set, and I hate those things with rubber straps between my toes. I know my huaraches are here SOMEWHERE.
ReplyDeleteOh, I love that comment about the pets coming to great you when you die! I don't really believe in heaven (or hell) but I'd be willing to open my mind to the possibility of frolicking one more time with my dog Marcie, and even the one kitten we had, Tiggy. The long line of turtles my brothers and I buried (and later dug up), not so much.
ReplyDeleteI lose stuff all the time, and yet I'm the only one in my house who can ever find anything. I'm happy you found your sister's necklaces.
What a great mental picture, Rosemary: those poor celestial critters, all burdened with your lifetime's lost possessions! LOL
ReplyDeleteI'm still searching for my favorite pair of gold earrings that just vanished one night between the bathroom and the bedroom. I cannot imagine where they went, and I'm still mourning them, three or four years later.
Isn't the mind a wonderful thing, though? In our two houses I can probably tell you where more than 99% of the items are in each of them, which is pretty astonishing if you really think about how many things I have cataloged in my poor brain. No wonder I forget what I'm supposed to be doing every day.
Finding those necklaces was lovely!! Yay!!!
ReplyDeleteI lost a bunch of wooden apples. Really pretty hand carved bright shiny red wooden apples. Lost in 1976 when we moved into the first house we bought. When we were packing up the house to move to Boone in 1986 I decided to see what was in a box that had been stuck in the bottom on a kitchen cupboard for 10 years. Yep - pretty hand carved bright shiny red wooden apples.
I hate losing things. I will continue looking for them forever. Especially if it's jewelry!
I just loved your comment about the past pets greeting you when... that starts a whole mountain of ideas for future stories... Thelma Straw in Manhattan
ReplyDeleteI love the image of your long-lost pets greeting you in the afterlife with all of long-lost possessions, Ro!
ReplyDeleteI look frantically and then pretend to give up on lost things (to fool them into coming home). I pretend to alternate between these two states all the time, but I really never give up looking, never give up hope. Look at what happened with your two necklaces!
You might not be able to tell from looking at my house at the moment, but I'm pretty much a "put things where they live" person. So I HATE losing things, but this last year I think we've had brownies in the house. First it was pair of earrings. Not expensive, but a gift from a friend, and they went perfectly with just about everything I owned. Then, much more distressing, on day last winter, my prescription reading glasses just...disappeared. I was trying to finish a book, and I can't work at the computer, or read a book for any length of time, without them. I hadn't been out of the house. I looked everywhere for days. Finally, in desperation, I went to Walmart and ordered the quickest, cheapest replacement I could get, thinking that sooner or later, the good glasses WOULD turn up. They never have.
ReplyDeleteThen it was my rubber flip flops. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but they were spa sandals, the kind that conform to your feet, a gift from when I'd been a guest at Lake Austin Spa, and I loved them.
So, brownies, gremlins, or maybe the ghosts of those departed pets.
I can see a story idea there... What sort of bargains would we make to get our stuff back?
My law school roommates borrowed my car to go to the grocery store. The key chain broke & they lost the key. Caught a ride home with a neighbor. Felt desolate. No problem -- I had a spare. We looked and looked but didn't find it. 3 months later, I graduated, packed, moved from South Bend IN back to Montana for a few weeks, then packed up and moved to Seattle for the summer. Repacked & moved to Tacoma for a job; stayed w/relatives until my apt was ready. As I unpacked the last load into my apartment, I found the lost key on the floor in the back seat.
ReplyDeleteSo, the moral of the story is either "never stop looking" or "stop looking and it will turn up." You choose. :)
Leslie, your story reminded me of a similar one.
ReplyDeleteIn 1982, my husband was in the middle of a 7 1/2-week national lecture tour. I met him in Las Vegas, where we were married, and then traveled with him for two weeks. After about a week I noticed that the stone was out of my engagement ring, which was actually a sapphire birthstone ring with two eentsy diamonds, one on each side. We backtracked 20 miles to several places we had been that day, but couldn't find the stone. I was heartbroken.
Steve took me to the airport and happened to mention he would be taking the car to the carwash and would also be vacuuming it. I pleaded with him not to, but to wait until he got home, just in case. When he got home, as soon as he had all the luggage and stuff out of the car, I went out to clean it, and lo and behold, there was the sapphire, on the floor in the backseat, even though we had looked there half a dozen times.
I agree: never give up!
Hallie, STILL looking for Tappercomb!
ReplyDeleteI tend to forget that I was looking for items until much later when I remember then I can't remember what it was I was looking for.
ReplyDeleteLost things aren't gone. I just don't know where they are, therefore I should keep looking for them.
ReplyDeleteRosemary, I love the image of my former pets waiting with my lost things, but does anyone really want me to find a pair of gray and orange platform shoes and a pink and white pair of striped hotpants? It's not exactly how I imagined I'd dress in my next life.
This November it will be three years (or is it four?) since I misplaced a gift box containing a necklace/bracelet/earrings set that I'd purchased to give to my niece for Christmas. What particulatly upsets me about this is that I RARELY lose anything. From time to time I pull things out of drawers or off of closet shelves in a new effort to find it.Last week I had a burst of energy and tried once again to find that box. No gift box turned up -- but I DID find a working flashlight that I didn't know I had and could have used in a recent power outage.
ReplyDeleteRosemary...would those pets have been responsible for most of those items disappearing in the first place? I've known people who had dogs that ran off with all the family shoes and piled them into nests.
I'm glad those necklaces resurfaced...that's a special gift.
AH, running in-I'm not home today..anyway, I cannot find my shorts. I have looked everywhere, and it's almost the end of summer,and NO SHORTS. Last October or so I put them somehwere so I would have them this year, and NO IDEA. I have looked everywhere. They have to be in our house, It's finite. They have to be there. But no.
ReplyDeleteIt often true that if you stop loooking , the thing presents itself. That it was there, all the time, right where you were lookng, you were just too frantic to find it. But, so far, no shorts.