Lost and Found

For over ten years — probably closer to twenty, but I don't remember at this point — I had the same wallet, brown leather in the ordinary fold-over style with too few compartments for too many cards. It served me well for all that time, but, as leather tends to do when casually jammed into a pocket week in and month out, it was disintegrating before my very eyes. Being the sort of person who forms irrational attachments to common objects, I resisted as long as I could, but finally I yielded to the inevitable and bought a replacement. After I got home from the obligatory grocery-shopping frenzy on Wednesday night I transferred the contents of the old wallet to the new one, which I then stowed in the pouch of my sweatshirt.

I never thought of it again until we were on our way out to brunch yesterday morning, when I noticed that it was no longer in the pouch. I wasn't too concerned; I had probably taken it out at some point while removing the sweatshirt, or having found it too bulky in the midst of bending and stooping and reaching while cooking and cleaning, and a quick search would turn it up.

When we got home I looked in the logical places, and then in the places where I typically misplace my wallet or cell phone or keys after forgetting that I took them out of my pocket, and then in all the places I could think of where I'd been over the last two days, including all the drawers, cabinets, bags and boxes in our bedroom, the kitchen, the trash (ick), the garage, the back yard, Taz's and Miss B's rooms, the basement, and the guest room, where I carefully unpacked, opened and examined the contents of all the yarn boxes I had stowed in the closet so that my parents would have somewhere to sleep.

During this process I found considerable quantities of yarn I had forgotten about, a treasured pair of straight needles Roxie had given me and one of which I had given up for gone to the Great Repository of Mismatched Objects in the Sky, Grant's old card case (my heart leapt and then plummeted on that one), a chunk of amethyst I had been unable to resist at Rhinebeck two or maybe three years ago, and assorted other objects that I was quite happy to see again — but no wallet.

Finally I came into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, closed my eyes, and, turning the amethyst over and over in my hands, I began to recite to Grant everything that I had done since arriving home on Wednesday night and everywhere I had been, noting that I had already looked in each place. I got to "I changed the guest beds," and, remarking that I had looked on and around the beds but not actually in them, I got up and went back into the guest room. It's probably pointless, I thought, but for the sake of thoroughness... and I moved all the yarn off Marjorie's bed and took off all the bedclothes: no dice. Feeling very silly, I moved all the yarn off my dad's bed and undressed it in turn, and felt a slightly squishy rectangular object near the foot. Reaching in between the bottom sheet and the mattress pad, I pulled out...


I have instructed Grant to remind me of this the next time I say there's no point in looking somewhere for something I couldn't possibly have dropped there.

I have also informed my dad that if ever offered a job as a princess, he should turn it down, as he can sleep quite happily in a bed with a wallet under the sheets, never mind a pea under seven mattresses.

And speaking of sleeping, I'll find it a bit easier tonight. (If you thought yesterday's post read a bit pro forma and distracted, now you know why.)