Lost & Found
It was an earring, but not just any earring. It was a silver heart inside a heart, one of the first my daughter owned. She was six, and I had brought her to the local gym to swim. From the locker room, a tiled corridor led to the pool. The passage was sauna-hot regardless of season. My daughter padded along in her LOL flipflops, her suit an aqua mermaid sheen. She prattled with her bestie. They said things like:
“I love swimming!”
“Me too!”
Everything sounded like delightful coincidence, everything a gush, life infused with a wonder that once we lose, we never quite find again.
They were both competent swimmers. From a poolside chair, I could read, one eye on the girls. They lingered in the shallow end, cycling through foam noodles and diving rings. They considered playing family but couldn’t decide who to be. They back-floated, eyes on the rafters as if they were stars.
Suddenly, my daughter stood and tugged her ear. “Oh no.”
“What, honey?”
“My earring!” she wailed. “It’s lost.” She hurled the word in accusation. It was somebody’s fault, but not hers.
Her bestie paddled to her, peppering her with questions: “Could it be in the locker room? Could it be in the pool?”
“Are you sure you were wearing both?” was likely my contribution. Later I would add, “If they are your favorite, why did you wear them in the pool?”
“I’m sure, Mom, and it’s gone!”
Chin trembling, goggles tipped into her mussed-up hair, she emitted an air of finality, of death and the ages. I was moved.
Her bestie encouraged, “We’ll find it!”
So we looked. We retraced our steps from the pool to the locker room to the car. We peered into door compartments, clothes creases, and chlorine glaze. We were relentless, but couldn’t find it. At the front desk, I left a description and my number. The receptionist’s indifference suggested the list of lost items was long and ignored.
LOL flipflops slapping the tiles, my daughter was inconsolable. Her bestie tried, but her friend swatted each hopeful possibility. No, this pair would always be her favorite. No, the earring would never be found. No, we couldn’t replace it. It was irreplaceable—one of the first pairs her father bought her while getting her ears pierced at Claire’s. A replacement wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would be the same.
*
The earring wasn’t the same, but the girls and pool were. My daughter and her bestie were ten. They tested the diving board, chucked the Nerf into the net, and obeyed the stern woman claiming a lane for laps.
This silver stud was shaped like a sunflower. Her aunt had bought them in a Nova Scotia cruise port, searching the stalls with her for the perfect pair. I understood my daughter wearing them while her aunt was visiting, but into the pool? Had she entirely forgotten the similar loss when she was six?
Her goggled face red with anguish, she swam to the edge where I sat. The oval lenses and the way the strap pinched her face, scrunching her cheeks, made her look like an infant. She tugged her ear. “Please help me, Mom.”
I retraced our steps, gaze swishing across tiles, while she and her bestie scoured the pool. Returning empty-handed, I pointed them into a grid search, lane by lane, then peered into the hazy green myself. For once I wished I’d worn a swimsuit. For once I would have gone in. Countless flecks on the cement bottom mimicked an earring. I instructed my daughter to hold the other one under so I could gauge its gleam. When she sniffed back tears, I interrupted a father and son sword-fighting with pool noodles. “Have you seen an earring?”
When the lap swimmer stood, palm pressed to her cap, I asked her too.
Everyone searched. I was touched by the kindness. As the calls echoed—Nothing here! Nope!—my daughter could no longer check her tears.
Then her bestie turned a handstand and emerged, triumphant. “I found it!”
Everyone cheered.
Jubilant, my daughter lifted the stud for all to see.
“I’m glad, honey,” I gushed, but something gnawed. Now that the earring was found would the lesson again be lost?
*
At the town elementary school, Lost & Found isn’t a box beneath the reception desk. Instead, across from the cafeteria, it’s a massive table with a horseshoe-shaped booth, a feast of fallen left-behinds. In late spring, as a “last call,” the items are moved outside. Aligned on folding tables, there’s so much stuff, the lavish and the ragbag—pro-soccer jerseys, Yetis and Stanleys, rumpled sweaters and soiled socks. Do poorer children lose things less often? Does abundance breed carelessness?
At the bus stop, mid-winter, another Nor’easter predicted, I dug into her backpack for her hat and gloves. It was the pink chenille set my mother gave her at Christmas. Fishing around, I found only one glove.
“Where’s the other one?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she stated. “Where is it?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Check Lost & Found?” she suggested in earnest.
“It’s your responsibility.”
Lips firm, she turned toward the approaching bus. I could tell she didn’t quite believe that. And why should she? All her life I’ve been her trashcan and coatrack, her answer to “Where is my—?”
When she disembarked that afternoon, waving the missing glove, I detected a defiance. It seemed she could forget anything, except a perceived slight.
Should I help her look? Should I do all I can to ensure she finds? I ponder future, bigger losses against which I will be useless. Could she string together the help I give her now, could it form an amulet? I rarely lose things, but that could change. And when I do—the gold shell earring with its tiny pearl—I don’t hesitate to ask St. Anthony for assistance, co-opting a religion I don’t practice, somehow assuming I’m worthy of his aid.
“Check again,” I counsel my daughter. “Make sure you have everything.”
But when she doesn’t, I often chide, “Now whose fault is that?”
If there’s a balance to seek here—and when in parenting isn’t there—a scale weighing blame and grace, I think I lean too heavily toward get-it-together.
I can picture my daughter and her bestie at six. Through that sauna-hot corridor, flipflops slapping tiles, the friend doggedly pursued. My daughter was convinced that the heart-inside-a-heart earring would never be found; and on some deeper level, I think she intuited immutable, heart-wrenching loss.
“It’s gone!” she lamented. “And nothing can replace it!”
But then there’s her bestie, baby fat still rounding her thighs. All ruffles and seahorses, sparkling water dripping from her outstretched arms, she addressed my daughter’s convulsing back. “Who knows?” she chirped. “Who knows?”
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