#22 / Losing things, Small Things and Use the Bleeping China
or looking through soup and ignoring the mushrooms
This past year things have been falling into and out of place. My children are adulting; my car keys beg for a babysitter. I’m sleeping most nights; I reset my passwords way too much. The new property is coming along; my wallet is somewhere.
My wallet IS somewhere in the house. It always shows up eventually. I am recently finding many days I can’t recall where I left it. My husband would argue that I have too many ‘purses’ and the changing of guards happens frequently enough to shake reality of which handbag was used last. I would argue that the changing of guards has been a lifetime commitment and only recently has my unexplained lapse of context failed.
Falling into and out of place. Reminding me, again, what I was talking about.
I had to go to the big city a month or so ago. Back to the exact area I ran away from. Loud. Large. Responsive. Flooded with things. The trip was for work and I decided to drive myself the 7.5 hours so I could have a vehicle. I love that 101 windy coast drive and I could get in an audio book or two.
I arrived around dinner time and went straight to the hotel and checked in. I was hungry. I got back in my car and went ‘downtown’ Pleasanton. This is not a large bay area city. Trust me. I tiredly parked off main (somewhere - key to story) and meandered ‘downtown’. Window shopping, many cuisine choices and people watching. Props the city has that.
I found a lovely little spot to dine. Ate and decided my timer was about to shut off for the evening. It is time to go back and crash. I have an 8am tomorrow in a real building, with real people and I can’t be in pj’s under my zoom.
I went to find my car. I could probably write an enormous amount of chatter about all the wonderful things I saw. Everything except my car. Eventually, having spent an absurd amount of time looking I felt defeated. This was a real bar-raising of thing losing. I parked it. I couldn’t even explain it away that “I wasn’t driving.” How did I misplace a vehicle? Right? I walked around looking for Macchiato (fka Turd, but my friend helped us rename it), first on the street where I was sure I turned down, then on the nearest cross street to where I actually ate, and then the search grid became ever larger and more ludicrous to me. It’s my car.
Finally, I went back to the street where I’d started and noticed a small sign: “no parking anytime.” Well, oh, shxx. Did I? No…?! Channelling my inner child ‘lost and helpless’ I took a deep breath. Go back to the lovely restaurant. I briskly walked to try and pace my heart. Thirty-plus minutes later I found Macchiato on a street completely unrelated and in a nice spot. Was I in some sort of featureless state when I parked? We will never know. I refuse to believe I am the absent-minded professor. Right?
Needles and haystacks
I have yet to find good advice on how to find missing things once lost. In fairness, people do try. [though lost is relative] There are books, self-help gurus, pleasant people you do not know, suggesting the obvious (calm down, think back to where you were when you last had said object…), some suspect advice as the “18 inch rule” where supposedly the majority of your lost soles are lurking less than two feet from where you first thought them to be, or the really suspect advice- New Agey. Think a long silver cord reaching from your navel all the way to your missing thing… Sure.
The most vague or interesting and amusing advice IS online. That drunk librarian has a shitload of advice. Her advice is useful only in proportion to the strangeness of lost item. Losing your passport, for instance, would probably and reasonably give you a list of things TO DO after you lost your passport but not necessarily offer advice on how to find your passport. If you lost your keys and do a search it could kinda (not really) be instructional: look in your couch. Lose your marijuana pipe? Were you in a fit of paranoia and hid it? Try your sock drawer. Lost your way? [no, don’t search for that]. Or lost some Crypto coins? Good luck with that.
I mean if I lost Little Girl, which apparently could happen, I wouldn’t do an internet search, …even though I think there are websites dedicated to one losing their pet. I wouldn’t lose Little Girl! And if I lost my phone what do we do instinctively? Have your spouse, friend, person-you-may-not-know-now-but-you-will, uh call your phone. But that only works if your phone isn’t dead. You can use your magical key fob to find your car - but only if it’s in range. (why didn’t you do that Lisa - when you lost Macchiato? Because our fob is on it’s last leg and barely locks/unlocks itself even when rubbing noses.)
Forgotten or “lost” passwords anyone? Passwords are to computers what socks are to the dryer. I think the only thing trickier than keeping control of passwords are the creative questions used to retrieve them. You bet I know my favorite middle school teachers name, we can call him Mr. M for short; but my 2nd Aunt-twice-removed’s maiden name? Select your retrieval questions carefully. Just the other day my step-dad tried to recall his recovery question: “First pets name.” That was fun.
Earbuds (lost backstage/ found in bucket of writing instruments [thanks to Ty]), earrings, mittens, jackets, postcard you meant to write, phone number to really important contact you really need to contact, the paint swatch of your house that you purposely put in the safe place so you can do touch up eventually knowing you will someday need. Ugh, W-2s. Lost, lost, lost.
Size of article proportionate to loss? Hard to loose your laptop, easier to lose an iPad, lickity-split to lose your cell phone and just forget those ear buds. It is reported that the average person misplaces up to nine things a day. Which kinda sounds elevated until I think of the times I need to go downstairs to grab X to find X was already upstairs but Y and Z are not.
I can’t even ask my husband ‘have you seen my X’, for fear of that look. After a certain age, every missing article is now subject of scrutinization. Whatever.
The joke with a punch
Broadly speaking, there are two explanations that I have read on why I’m losing my mind along with my stuff. One is scientific, the other is psychoanalytic and both are unsatisfying.
From a scientific corner, losing something represents a failure of recollection or a failure of actual attention. We can’t find that memory of where we set down the keys because our brain wasn’t paying attention. It didn’t encode it. In the psychoanalytic corner, misplacing something is a representation of success. Yup. A deliberate sabotage of our rational mind by some subliminal desire. Freud of course.
We never lose what we highly value. Ouch.
If this is the case, then on one hand we should focus more. Be in the now. (while you are paying attention perhaps you should re-codify your genes or other circumstances to help improve your memory, as well). On the other hand, get rid of all your subconscious motives. Wildly over simplistic in both hands. Was I an inattentive mom? [not paying attention] Or just didn’t care that Tyler would all of a sudden go missing? [inner desire for him to be lost? [I hardly think so.] Maybe I lost the car because I have this internal hate of capitalism. Or deep down I am watching my green footprint?
The better explanation, pour moi, is simply that life is complicated and my mind has limited space left. I am flawed; I am human. Since I am human, I have stuff to lose.
Stuff to lose
I have this cherished letter from my grandfather. He wrote me a poem about a black crow. I took his letter and created a small book for him, with his poem as it’s inhabitant. I mailed it to him and he enjoyed it. The letter is missing. I cannot explain the frustration, anger and broken heart I feel for this letter.
Our first reaction to losing something is where is it? But under that film lies the question of causality. What happened to it. Did I flippantly leave it on a table where it got tossed as junk? Did I put it in one of a thousand special places that no longer exist? I guess it’s closure i’m looking for. That coveted condition of closure.
Causality can then open the can of worms of blame. Human flaw - we like to blame something or someone. Who threw it in the trash without checking with me if it were junk? Who left that box in the attic? Or who took the box to goodwill? As sane as I try to be sometimes I’d rather think it were fairies or aliens or even a small wormhole that stole my letter. It wasn’t me. [oh, flashback Shaggy]
Outsourcing at its best = blame.
My personal challenge: clutter. My demon. Scattered laundry. Stacks of mail. Stacks on stacks of paper worth saving. How do I still have loose change - do people still use change? Over challenged garage. I’m nth close to ending up on a hoarder tv show. This is completely separate from my mental clutter. Clutter on top of clutter is real. Responsibilities, appointments, pro-bono work that I actually ask for, projects in the piñata to-do book, projects outside of the piñata to-do book, and just endless psychological pieces of pie that torcher me with fatigue, worry or excitement.
I have been trying to simplify my life. Pairing down. Taking a long look at the 4 black pair of loafers that I wear once a year and deciding to just keep one. I know what you’re thinking, you, Lisa, may need to seek help. I don’t own 4 black loafers because it’s a status thing, or I want to dress to impress. I have 4 black loafers because when I bought them - they brought me joy. Years on years later I owned 4.
Today I own one pair of black loafers. They rock.
This road to recovery, is a mere semi-struggle with the “does this bring you joy”, (Kondo) Spark Joy, ugh, Marie Kondo's book [now Netflix movie]. The Spark Joy premise is to physically hold said item in your hand and decide immediately if it brings you joy. In theory, this is pretty great - if your anyone else but me.
Why is this such a challenge for me?
Everything brings me joy. I have a movie ticket stub of my sons first big theater movie - Toy Story. He loved it! How can that memory NOT bring me joy? I have every thimble collected since the age of 8. Sigh, I get it. Clutter.
“Not everything worth keeping has to be useful.”-Cynthia Lord, Rules
Keepsakes have power over us. Alas, maybe just me. Emotional power. Deciding what defines a keepsake, on my personal set of made-up rules, makes me quiver. Can’t hold everything and the first thought be “Joy!” Nope.
Joy is too small a word. Literally and figuratively. I can hold them and go somewhere. I can smell them and be near someone. I can use them and feel something or someone channeling through me. These small things transport me. The most uninteresting thing can be quite interesting, pleasing and reminiscent.
I occasionally bring out my grandfather’s pen to write with. I will wear my father’s wind-up Bulova watch. I adore looking at my mother’s pink housecoat. It’s true, I have boxes of keepsakes, and I have to decide what to keep.
Yet, again, not everything worth keeping has to be useful - truly.
If it is useful, just use it or lose it
I will trim stuff away. I will trim stuff away. I will trim stuff away. And just use the bleeping china if you are keeping it.
When Erma Bombeck discovered she was dying from cancer—, “If I Had to Live My Life Over”:
“… I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded. I would have eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace. …I would have sat on the lawn with my kids, even if it meant grass stains.”
Items worth keeping should be used. Not just to hope they bring your kids a good eBay number. Why are we determined to save the “good” stuff for special occasions? Childhood rearing? Not mine. Yeah, momma has the Christmas dishes but if they didn’t have a Christmas tree smack dead in the center I’m pretty sure she’d use them all the time. She wasn’t one to keep things and not use them.
I know I have good pens that i’m frightened i will “use up”. I’m looking right at them. We all have that something, right? Perhaps the fear of using something up OR breaking something you love is also about loss? Loss of certain things can be earth shattering. It’s a parking ticket: “Lack of order”. Patty Smith imagines a place for all the world’s missing objects called the Valley of Lost Things. Will my grandfather’s letter be in the Valley of Lost Things? Can I lose one of my socks and send it to this Valley on a rescue mission?
Small things are not really things
While my clutter and lack of order in the physical and mental world is short a proper guardian, I do know that the important small things in my life have nothing to do with ‘things’. Ty sets out a paper towel on the counter every morning with a spoon and stir implement. Next to it is my coffee mug, a paper filter and the coffee grinder, where he has already ground me coffee.
I do yoga most mornings and Little Girl tries to be a part of this. We have slow yet deep conversations over dinner every night. I watch the baby birds learn to fly in the spring and keep watch as my succulents sprout new friends. Little Girl relaxing with her tongue out. My friends have great laughs. The song “Hey There Delilah” (…I hear my children in the back seat singing when they were young). Sigh. I could go on and on. These small things cannot be purchased or reproduced.
They can be lost or forgotten. They can be stolen. Stolen by attention.
This real list is why I’m downsizing my physical treasures and my mental treasures. I want to notice the small things that really bring me joy. Turn off my noise. Lock up the drunk librarian. I refuse to lose the small things that really matter with more clutter in my head. How do I hold a thought? What is ok to let go and give space to other thoughts?
Of course I cannot walk away from some of my physical treasures. I just don’t want them to get dusty, or lost in the Valley, or unloved. If I’m keeping them I better enjoy them now or they need to go. Everyday shall be a good pen day, everyday is worth the nice china, and everyday is worthy of wearing my dad’s watch.
Here’s to successfully losing things and/or ignoring unimportant things, while finding the joy of focus in the now.
hmm. Lose unimportant focus.
Every single word is so true! And what about the things we keep for others and then can't remember exactly where they were last seen?
So many thoughts while reading...trampled on by new thoughts brought on by the next paragraph. I really wanted to expand on the Shaggy reference because it's one of my naughty favorites. The real crux seems to be that all the advice is mutually exclusive, and therefore unworthy. If you lose yourself in the moments because you are treasuring them, you will misplace your phone, your wallet, or your car.