Missing
Last night I spent a good 40 minutes looking for my glasses. I almost never wear them – the prescription is more than 15 years old – but I got a speck of something in my eye and wanted to take out my contacts.
I never did find them, which I thought was weird because I never lose anything. Like, never. At some point in my childhood I acquired a disturbing inability to function without "a place for everything and everything in its place" – which still may at times look like clutter to other people, but the point is, I know where things are.
My dad thinks this is because I inherited his borderline obsessive-compulsive personality. I think he's right. It was interesting to discover during my visit last weekend that we both have strict rules about certain things relating to numbers. For instance, there are only six allowable times that I can set my alarm clock to: 5 minutes after the hour, 10 minutes, 20, 25, 40, or 50. I've tried to branch out to other times – 7:15, for example – and have come so unsprung over it that I literally cannot fall asleep until I get up and change it to either 7:10 or 7:20. As for 7:14, or 7:16? Out of the question.
What strange quirks do you have, gentle reader?
Anyway: Living with other people, especially when they are less meticulous than I am about these things, has always been a challenge. Because when something goes missing, I always know that I was not the person who misplaced it. It's hard not to blame. But in this case I knew that Mr. A wouldn't have moved my glasses – he doesn't even know where I keep them. So it must have been me. Only it wasn't me!
The mystery was solved this morning with a voicemail from my mother, who said she had found a pair of glasses downstairs in their house, and was wondering if they might be mine. The question of how they ended up loose in my parents' basement, when I could have sworn I'd left them in the same place they always live – my little purple travel bag – was answered when I remembered that Mr. A found my green vacation toothbrush lying on the floor in the same basement, just an hour before we left to come home. The toothbrush lives in the travel bag, too. So I think one of my little nieces or nephew must have seen the bag on the bathroom counter and decided to do a little pillaging.
Why am I telling this fascinating story? Glasses missing, then recovered; toothbrush defiled but easily replaceable ... what's the big deal?
The big deal part is that in the same voicemail, my mom also mentioned that my baby sister's first really serious boyfriend just broke up with her. I never met the guy, but I'll say this for him: his timing seems kind of cruel. The day before Valentine's Day, and only a week before she goes in for a tonsillectomy she's very nervous about.
I've actually been a little wary of this guy all along, primarily because he lives on the East Coast and if she married him we might never be able to convince her to move back out west again. She has friends there too, of course, and a job she loves, but I still hate to think of her going through this all alone several thousand miles away, especially with the hearts & flowers holiday and her surgery coming up and it being the middle of a bitter cold winter and all. I've been sort of heartaching for her all day, and remembering how it felt to go through my last big breakup (aka, the divorce) out here away from my family, all by myself. My mom is flying out there next week to be with her at the hospital and spend a few days helping her recuperate after she gets home. I wish I could go, too.
Glasses, toothbrushes, hearts – things get lost, things get broken. Order becomes disorder. She was six years old when I moved away for college. I wish I had made more of an effort to know her better while she was growing up; I never really got to be there for her, for anything. So today I sent her a box of little presents to let her know what I've learned: that it all comes back together again eventually. Of course, then it all falls apart again in new and different ways ... but we don't really need to dwell on that right now. For now, let's focus on what still feels good. A card, a book, a red down blankie to snuggle up in, and of course a little box of really good chocolate. I hope it helps.
I never did find them, which I thought was weird because I never lose anything. Like, never. At some point in my childhood I acquired a disturbing inability to function without "a place for everything and everything in its place" – which still may at times look like clutter to other people, but the point is, I know where things are.
My dad thinks this is because I inherited his borderline obsessive-compulsive personality. I think he's right. It was interesting to discover during my visit last weekend that we both have strict rules about certain things relating to numbers. For instance, there are only six allowable times that I can set my alarm clock to: 5 minutes after the hour, 10 minutes, 20, 25, 40, or 50. I've tried to branch out to other times – 7:15, for example – and have come so unsprung over it that I literally cannot fall asleep until I get up and change it to either 7:10 or 7:20. As for 7:14, or 7:16? Out of the question.
What strange quirks do you have, gentle reader?
Anyway: Living with other people, especially when they are less meticulous than I am about these things, has always been a challenge. Because when something goes missing, I always know that I was not the person who misplaced it. It's hard not to blame. But in this case I knew that Mr. A wouldn't have moved my glasses – he doesn't even know where I keep them. So it must have been me. Only it wasn't me!
The mystery was solved this morning with a voicemail from my mother, who said she had found a pair of glasses downstairs in their house, and was wondering if they might be mine. The question of how they ended up loose in my parents' basement, when I could have sworn I'd left them in the same place they always live – my little purple travel bag – was answered when I remembered that Mr. A found my green vacation toothbrush lying on the floor in the same basement, just an hour before we left to come home. The toothbrush lives in the travel bag, too. So I think one of my little nieces or nephew must have seen the bag on the bathroom counter and decided to do a little pillaging.
Why am I telling this fascinating story? Glasses missing, then recovered; toothbrush defiled but easily replaceable ... what's the big deal?
The big deal part is that in the same voicemail, my mom also mentioned that my baby sister's first really serious boyfriend just broke up with her. I never met the guy, but I'll say this for him: his timing seems kind of cruel. The day before Valentine's Day, and only a week before she goes in for a tonsillectomy she's very nervous about.
I've actually been a little wary of this guy all along, primarily because he lives on the East Coast and if she married him we might never be able to convince her to move back out west again. She has friends there too, of course, and a job she loves, but I still hate to think of her going through this all alone several thousand miles away, especially with the hearts & flowers holiday and her surgery coming up and it being the middle of a bitter cold winter and all. I've been sort of heartaching for her all day, and remembering how it felt to go through my last big breakup (aka, the divorce) out here away from my family, all by myself. My mom is flying out there next week to be with her at the hospital and spend a few days helping her recuperate after she gets home. I wish I could go, too.
Glasses, toothbrushes, hearts – things get lost, things get broken. Order becomes disorder. She was six years old when I moved away for college. I wish I had made more of an effort to know her better while she was growing up; I never really got to be there for her, for anything. So today I sent her a box of little presents to let her know what I've learned: that it all comes back together again eventually. Of course, then it all falls apart again in new and different ways ... but we don't really need to dwell on that right now. For now, let's focus on what still feels good. A card, a book, a red down blankie to snuggle up in, and of course a little box of really good chocolate. I hope it helps.
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