Lost and Found

Or Where We Are in the Journey

Somehow, I have entered into a season of accidental, forgetful misplacing. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but in in the past few weeks I’ve retraced my steps numerous times looking for that raincoat I loved, my Kindle, car keys (of course), the list of books needed from various libraries, the book I’m reading, the other book I’m reading, sunglasses, the dog’s leash, my phone, only one of the new pair of earrings…

All small potatoes stuff, and yet the experience of loss just stops me in my tracks. Without the keys, the list, the leash, I can’t proceed with my plans. I walk myself in circles, unable to remember where I last wore the coat, and worse, sending a whole lot of psychic energy down the drain. I worry about money wasted (I splurged on those earrings impulsively just days ago! ) I worry about time wasted (how many places do I revisit before I give up on the raincoat or the glasses?) Even small losses can generate big hiccups in my day to day.

But life is so often an accumulation of losses. The job we don’t get or the one that runs aground for any number of reasons; The times we come in second or third or don’t quite make the team; The rejection; The not-so-perfect fit; The relationships that come and go; The abrupt diagnoses or the slow degradation of physical abilities. So many missed opportunities, “never again”s, seasons and lives that come to their ends.

I’m not a fan of loss. Blue sky optimist that I am, I expect to repair what gets broken, to find what I lose. I want to keep people, things, moments for always. I’m the hard core mom with “a place for everything and everything in its place” with zero tolerance for missing game pieces. I yearn for wholeness and forever. But as someone who spends my productive time thinking about narrative character arcs, about the ups and downs of any journey - the hero’s or my own, I need to understand and accept the inevitability of loss. It’s part of my story and yours.

So maybe it’s just coincidence that has me simultaneously reading Michelle Zauner’s memoir of finding herself as she loses her mother to cancer, Crying in HMart, and listening to Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reimagining of Dickens’ David Copperfield, set in Appalachia during the advent of the opioid epidemic. Both are great, hard, very different stories that nevertheless put the experience of loss where I can’t help facing it.

Kingsolver writes, “The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.” I, we live in that in between.

But as with yin-yang, lost and found need each other. Whether small or major, loss can only hold the stage for so long. Eventually grief or disappointment will make way for acceptance and evolution. Eventually, I will get a new raincoat (yup, pretty sure someone else ended up with my old one), find the Kindle and/or glasses (still looking), and somehow move on.

To that end, I love books that center the idea of finding: joy, oneself, one’s purpose, special moments...you know, magic.

And because I couldn’t work these favorites (two by author friends!) into my last post, isn’t it great that they celebrate finding?!

Pick up In the Palm of My Hand by Jennifer Raudenbush, and experience the wonder of connection between the small, ordinary things a pocket collector might gather and “a universe of infinite possibilities.”

Or take A Walk Through the Redwoods by Bridgitte Rodguez, for an informational adventure in “a magical place” where foggy forest and mountain vistas invite discovery - from banana slugs to the realization that “we are one small part of this great big world.”

Finally, relish the colorful magnificence of collision between God and the Universe in The Stuff of Stars, by Marion Dane Bauer. More a tale of finding out how we fit into the cosmos (for me, anyway) than of tangible finding, but beautiful all the same!

I’m reminding myself that however much I pick up and organize, caretake and search, I’m going to lose some things, some loves. But I get to find some too, so I guess I can resolve to be okay living amidst the ups and downs of that journey. With that in mind, on the way home from the coffee shop where I began drafting this post, I connected with a little bit of magic for my week. Focusing in on the details of the path, I made it almost all the way to my front door, and….

I found the earring!

And more surprises in the pocket of my jean jacket…

May your days of lost and found be as wonder-ful!

😊😊