Lost and found

Ithink my introduction to the concept was at St. Francis Elementary School. I believe it was set up in a locker on the second floor hallway, the land of grades one through three, the staff room and the offices.

As a lifelong ‘poker’ (in the words of my exasperated Gran Quinn as I poked through the drawers of her vanity, a ‘rummager’ and thrifter, the thought of going through things to find potential treasure has always been alluring to me. When I was particularly good and had had my bath, my brothers in the tub tended to by Gran on a sleepover night, our Bampie would allow me the secret treat of going through our Gran’s crimson jewellery box.

I’ve always liked to know where things come from. Who they belonged to. What their story was. I grew to know the backstories of too many things in my grandparents’ house. I grew attached to so much of what was there, alive with its former owners’ life force and sometimes from far lands. Right down to the scrap of shawl, darkened with time, that was in my Gran’s hope chest. I think I was the only one who knew that when they boarded the ship from Scotland to Canada, my Gran, just 18 months old at the time, was crying.

Her grandmother wrapped her teddy bear in her very own scarf. She then saw her daughter and children off on the ship to Canada. They never saw one another again.

I know the story of the night that Great-great-gran in Scotland died. The family, then living in Bromptonville, were awakened by three loud knocks on the front door. The whole household was roused, and Pa (our greatgrandfather) and Joe Webb, a hired man living with the family at the time, ran to the door to see who was knocking at this late hour. No one was there. The story went that shortly thereafter they received word (via telegram I imagine) that she had died at that very hour.

So, when I dug through their things, sometimes with Gran at my side, other times with her yelling at me from downstairs to stop poking (she could hear the slide of the wood-onwood of drawers, the opening of closet doors), when we did come across that scrap of shawl, I knew what it was. A timepiece, and a powerful one at that. A grandmother’s love. A mother’s love. Powerful enough to send itself shooting across the ocean to wake the very same loved ones on her departure. The teddy bear was long gone, but that scrap of shawl stayed in our Gran’s possession until she left her home in the late 1990s. Eighty-something years.

When the house was emptied, the piece was lost. I felt terrible when I realized that the steamer trunk had likely been emptied, and with no one to recognize it, it had become just a sort of strange rag in the midst of other belongings.

It was lost. It is still lost.

Sometimes lost isn’t terrible. Sometimes it isn’t really lost – it is more…gone. And gone doesn’t have to be terrible either.

It was here, and then, it was gone. Sometimes those things are preserved, treasured and stories are told, perhaps if I had it today it would be framed, perhaps with a photo of our Gran as a little girl.

But, we can’t keep all of the things, nor should we. There is something truly good about letting go sometimes too. I have just told you the story of the scrap of shawl, and maybe you imagined it. Maybe you imagined something crocheted or knitted, perhaps you had a colour in mind. I can’t even be sure that I remember exactly what it looked like, as those moments of looking in the steamer trunk (a rare poking opportunity), and being told the story by Gran. I can see her, I can imagine in little flickers what once was. And that is almost as good as the scrap of shawl still being here, because its story is a little bit alive again as you read this.

Occasionally, there are things we once had that we thought were lost. Gone. And then, they reappear. In our hands we hold something we thought was no more. Sometimes it is with other things we have forgotten. Away, in a box or storage container, a closet, a drawer.

We sit in time then, time all around us. The time of the thing we have found. The time in between, the time of now. We decide what will happen now that a lost thing is found. We decide if we are thrilled to keep it with us, or if it now will serve a better purpose in someone else’s belongings, someone else who will enjoy the thing, that it will live its new life and new ways, whether its stories go with it or not.

Once in a while, we feel like that ourselves – we feel a little lost, not certain of purpose or place, until in a few flickers, we remember the things we love, the things we like to do, and we are buoyed up to the surface of whatever small corner we find ourselves in, rising above time and place to just ‘be’.

Found again.