Friday, February 03, 2006

lost and found

see this earring? it has nine lives.



now, see this wristlet? it has at least twenty.

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dabney has a talent for losing things. thankfully ann has an equal aptitude for retrieving them.

flashback to ann's college days. one nice early spring day, she was sitting on the grass on campus with an artist friend, who was whittling a small design along the side of a stick. later that day, during a walk off campus, ann's friend hurled the stick with all her might into a knee-deep field of grass.

back on campus a few days later, ann was rushing to a class - surely a few minutes late - when she nearly tripped on that same carved stick now lying directly in her path.

cut to present day. ann's a little grayer but nonetheless just as lucky. you may recall the missing earring that dabney had a cow over a few months ago - little diamond studs that ann's mom had given her as a christmas present. she had worn them everyday for five years when she lost them.

but even before that earring, she lost the wrist warmer. although perhaps not quite as well loved as the earrings, she still wore them all the time. those polka dots just made her happy.

well, the earrings came back pretty quickly. ann found it later the next day in the workroom on the floor. nothing crazy there.

the wristlet waited a little longer to be found - until yesterday in fact, when ann was out walking in the neighborhood. she saw that someone had draped it across a railing. there, apparently, it sat for over TWO MONTHS awaiting a reunion with its owner. it was a little worse for wear, having been exposed to rain, sleet, snow and hail. it now has a little hole.

how it got there, neither ann nor dabney knows or can recall.

weird juju? you decide.

2 comments:

Terra said...

OMG, I love it when that shit happens!

My mother gave me a beautiful topaz ring for my college graduation. One day I realized after work (I was a barrista in an authentic italian cafe in Pittsburgh) that the stone had fallen out of the setting. I had been all over the city that day, so who knows where it went missing. Lost for sure, right?

ONE MONTH later, I was sweeping up after a long day at the cafe, outside, in the area where we had tables set up on the sidewalk. I was lamenting to my co-worker about the lost stone when LO AND BEHOLD I look into the pile of trash, schmutz and dirt I had swept and saw something shiny. I peered down into that mess and found my lost topaz. On the sidewalk. A month later.

Karma baby. Puuuurrrreee Karma.

LP said...

I lose everything. I can completely empathize with Dabney - except that well you were lucky at least once, because you found Ann. ☺

Your great blog entry made me want to write in with a story of my own. My mother has a pair of leather gloves, so beaten-in that the leather has practically taken shape with creases in her beautiful weathered hands. I am sure she has had these gloves for over 20 years.

One day, running to get to the train door before it closed, I leap down the subway stairs when I see a glove on the floor. I swept down to pick it up and still miraculously made the train. I inspected the glove, which honestly could have been wretchedly filthy and unpleasant. But it was a perfect, beaten leather glove. I knew this glove- but, there was no way this could be my mom's glove. When did she ever take the subway? Actually, I remembered she was with friends showing them the city- Rockefeller Center, Central Park, the Christmas windows at Saks. But what were the chances that this could be her glove? So, well, I looked it over, and without thinking of the foulness my nose could have encountered (considering where it had been found....) I smelled the inner lining. If you weren’t aware, FYI, I have a canine sense of smell. A walk down Park Avenue in the spring, and I can identify a million different perfumes, colognes or scented lotions that remind me the people that have weaved in and out of my life.

There was no mistaking it. It didn't matter what perfume she had on that particular day, the inner lining had the distinctive smell of my mom's inner wrist. I knew this because there were no girly rituals shared between my mother and I in my tomboyish experience, bar one. I was entrusted with the delicate task of standing on the porcelain bowl and spritzing my mum with the fragile and expensive bottle of my choice- my mom's only luxuries. Two poofs, three if it was a special occasion. Then she would hold out her wrist for my little nose, and say “Que te parece?” What do you think? She would kiss the tissue with her lipstick and she was off.

It was my mom’s glove. The rest of this tale- the happy reunion between glove and wearer and the chain of events that followed- is too long to share. But I discovered something beyond just the glove and its lining- my mom and I have the same hands.

Happy Sunday from yours truly in Arizona.

xoL