Which planet has my sunglasses?

Dear Lost and Found in the sky; This is getting out of hand. It wasn’t bad enough you took my London Fog trench coat or my leopard print scarf or those killer brown suede ankle boots. You had to have my jeans jacket. Not the old one, not the one that’s baggy, not the one I wear to rake the leaves, but the trim and tidy dark blue one with the perfectly snug waist and the cute silver buttons.

Did you know it cost a fortune and had finally reached that perfectly soft stage?

How about those denim rejects screaming for redemption in garages and basements, thrown in corners and long forgotten? Why not take one of those? And if there’s a place you deposit the extras you snatch, please let me know where that is.

And while you’re at it, could you check for the cozy black fleece that didn’t show up when I went hunting for the winter clothes now that the weather has changed down here and I could use a guard against the hail you throw at us because you didn’t give us any fur. This is not our fault. Did you grab that fleece from the hiking trail when it got too warm? Who/what was it anyway that turned the weather from gloomy to glam?

I think I must be one of your biggest donors. Did you remember that? I guess remembering is one of the problems here, though it’s you guys who forgot I’d already given my keys and wallet when they slipped from my pants that day I dozed on the beach. Or did they slip? Perhaps your super-human skill is becoming so tiny you can slide in anywhere, added of course to your invisibility.

Yes, we’re all jealous. But you can’t fool me, I know you’ve been at it.

I knew it when you made off with that book years ago in that coffee bar. All I know is that memory of The Da Vinci Code was erased until later that day. How do you do that, that hocus pocus thing, and could you give us that technique when we want to forget other things we wish we didn’t remember? It would really come in handy.

And it wasn’t even that great, the book or the mocha latte. I thought you had better taste.

So I guess there’s a gigantic thrift store in the sky, is that it? Are you trading with other solar systems that need more sunglasses? Some dry civilizations with not one but two suns, where a trove of Ray-Bans, the Maui Jims, the cheap knock-offs have landed. My shades could be perched on a creature whose eyes are in their feet. Please tell them one of the pairs I contributed is prescription, and crushing them would be a sin on any planet.

And finally, how does it feel when you see us searching through suitcases and making frantic phone calls and combing the beaches and the wilderness and racking our brains? How does it feel to know you cause a grown woman to cry at the mere drop of a favorite cashmere sweater on a park bench, never to be seen again? Pretty powerful, huh? Or wise? Is this one of those lessons about the impermanence of things, the silliness of material

possessions, the opportunities we ignore for discarding the old and inviting the new? Is this your gift to us?

Dear Sticky Fingers, thank you then. Enjoy the jacket. It’s my gift to you.