LOST IN TRANSITION

I am the family’s designated “Looker”.  By this, I mean person who is good AT looking, as in for lost stuff. It’s unclear how I earned this dubious honorary title.[1] Perhaps it’s because I rarely lose stuff. (It should be noted that I DO forget things places with some frequency. But I know exactly where those things are: nowhere convenient.) Or maybe it is because I can find my own things quickly. This is not because I am organized. I just own few things, and actually use even fewer.[3] As I noted in the Hair Raising story, I have a Patagonia version of a Charlie Brown wardrobe. What one would generously call “minimalist”. I have items hanging in my closet dating back to the Summer-of-the-Weddings 25 years ago. They act solely as filler.  Even with these false-front pieces in the mix, my closet looks like an IKEA display. As such, it takes no more than a cursory glance to locate something. After this robust search, if an item is missing, it has usually been absconding with by an outside agent (this happens when you share clothing sizes with your children, and mother). But mostly I think it is relative. I am simply better at looking for stuff than the rest of our family. 

Our whole house is streamlined to the point where finding lost items requires looking in a maximum of two or three places. Despite this limited number of hide-y holes, all the (other) members of our family are terrible at finding things. Often these wayward items are right in front of their faces. For M, anything on a lower shelf basically does not exist.[2] H is, hands down, the winner in the keys/wallet/passport version of Where’s Waldo. She is so hopeless at finding “lost” items, that she stopped even attempting to look. She just comes directly to me, or her roommates. 

H: “Can you find my keys?”
Me: “Where did you look?” 
H: “Nowhere. I know you are going to be the one to find them, so I didn't bother trying.” 

Points for both truth-telling and efficiency.

Me: “Did you look there?”
H: “Where?”
Me: “Right. There.”, pointing at keys.
H: “Good job Moma!”

Additional points for delegation and positive affirmation.

The exception to my finder skills are items that are deemed worthy of special attention. A few HilarWithUs readers told me that they were inspired by the Empty Crows Nest story to up their purging game. Not wanting to discourage them, I didn't share that the girls reinstalled 99% of the things I had attempted to 're-house'. The other 1% have gone missing. C's very first comment when back on break was “Where are my rocks and my stick?” This being a totally non-descriptive stick that I don’t think I threw out but can’t (currently) find. The other two girls wanted to know where their stickers were. Those I know for certain I didn’t throw out. Hoarding stickers (and sticks and rocks) is a habit I share and have encouraged. So where are these items? I fear they are in the most evasive place possible: “somewhere safe”. In my experience, if something is described using words like “special” or “favourite” or “valuable” ... Beware! There is a statistically higher likelihood of it getting lost in the Black Hole of “safe keeping”. This is the case with one of the few significant possessions I have misplaced: my university graduation watch.

This watch hasn’t been seen since we moved into our current home almost fifteen years ago. Not surprising, given the (yet another) fiasco that that day was…  

Moves are chaotic at the best of times. But if you have hired movers (with the requisite punny name), and are just going from A to B, they are manageable. Not so with us. When we bought our current house, it was in its original 1900s condition. It needed a lot of work. This meant that we had to find temporary housing for a few months. “We” at the time included three girls (aged 2,4 & 6) as well as a new, surprise (!!) addition to our family: a very large, very hyper dog, who threw a wrench in my well laid plans. The only pet friendly place I could find last minute for the two months we needed was a Residence Inn suite. This turned out to be a low-end motel situation that had arrested in time circa 1972. It was at most 600 square feet, which the dog’s presence reduced in size to the equivalent of a bus shelter. The girls thought the place was the bomb because it had one of those diabolical Merry-Go-Rounds that used to be a focal point in every elementary play yard (until they invented health and safety standards). M, who at the time spent much of his life in hotel rooms around the world, was justifiably unenthused. After a single night, it was clear that despite the awesome shag rug, this home-away-from-home wasn’t going to work.

As a result, come moving day, we were basically moving out of our house into our car while I cobbled together a multistage transition between houses, storage facilities, rental accommodations, and various dog sitters. I found myself narrowed down to a single day to oversee the movers, do final clean up, and pack our interim life into the minivan. All by myself. M was at an all-staff offsite event, which clearly couldn’t be rescheduled to suit my poor scheduling. For some reason, I thought this was a manageable task for one person. I think I was recalling previous moves when it was just M & I and our one-bedroom apartment sized life. The last time we moved was also the first time we had hired a moving company. I remember feeling like a Queen - lounging on a folding chair, box list in hand, ticking off items as burly bros paraded past me. I guess I thought it would be the same. I was wrong.

The first problem was that I didn’t have an actual day. I had to do everything within the school day. And by school day, I mean a PRESCHOOL day. A preschool day typically buys you enough time to come home, clean up the breakfast dishes, start yet-another-load of laundry, and then rush back in time to be slightly late for pick-up. This was, shockingly, not enough time to pack up a four-bedroom house. The furniture move was okay, thanks to “Two Small Men with a Big Truck”. The Just Junk guys set me back a few turns when they had a Rage-Room session with the basement cabinetry that was decidedly NOT on the junk-it list and exposed a huge swath of black mold that I had no hope of addressing in the zero margin for error timeline I was backed into. I just stuck a “Sorry!” sticky note on the wall - which may have worked if I was moving more than three blocks away. The new owner gave me the stink eye whenever we passed each other (daily) for years. After being hard at it all day, it’s 5:00pm - official ownership transfer deadline. The minivan is jammed full. The coffin on top is jammed full. The valuables, including my graduation watch, deemed “not safe in a moving box” are stowed away…somewhere. I cram in the three girls, the dog, everything a family of five needs to live in unknown local, for an unknown length of time, plus the approximately 10,000 items random items I keep finding in cupboards and closets. We set out to our first stop: a cottage two hours’ drive away.  

About fifteen minutes down the highway, C asks: “Where is my ‘Souse?’” [3] Her “Souse" was her soother/pacifier. And not just any soother. But a specific, singular soother that we had pared to her down to. The parenting trick being that once it was gone, that was the end of her “baby stage”. She was not yet ready to be fully weaned off it. She still wanted it for the occasional stressful situations…you know, like when your entire world is packed up and taken away in a truck (and your mother is acting crazed). The pacifier phase-out was meant to self-driven and empowering, not forced on her at the worst possible moment. But here we were. Once again, my untethered imagination backfired on me as a parent.[4] I had really leaned into the pacifier weaning rite of passage. In this epic saga, the protagonist (daughter) got to triumphantly declare readiness to give up her artificial sucking thumb and trade it in for a super special toy of her choice. I had built this into a two-year old's equivalent to Sir Gawain and the Holy Grail. And it was happening NOW, when my brain is fully detached, and I am in hour 1,000/24. 

As sibling #3, C is fully aware of her due. She is also bawling her face off. If her Souse is gone (and it is 100%, most assuredly, totally, irretrievably GONE), she needs her replacement prize STAT. How can I make it up to her? Having forced her hand, I need to offer something a little above and beyond (also I am already halfway out of town and my toy store options are dwindling fast). I suggest the only thing that might work, a place that I normally refuse to enter: The Disney Store. Tears dry instantly. This, to the girls, is an excellent plan. For me it requires going to the sub-urban mega mall. The one with no parking if you happen to have a coffin box on top of your car. We are parked (reminder: with a car filled with all our critical belongings, valuables (including watch) …and DOG) a half-hour toddler-walk journey from the closest door. Followed by twice that, because the mall has been designed by a sadist who thought it clever to force you to walk the entire length of each floor to get to the only up escalators.

Finally at the Disney Store, the selection of the trade-in item begins. Perhaps you are not familiar with the decision-making capacity of a two-year-old. It is not great.

Me: "How about this?
C: blank face.
Me: "Or this?"
C: more blank face.[5]

Continue this exchange through every item in the store. Eons later I realize that C is indifferent to the toy. For her it was about the ceremony and fanfare of such a momentous event. From the wellspring of parental enthusiasm…at this point bone dry...I somehow muster enough positive energy to event-ize my way out of this self-generated hell hole.  The cashier, a minimum wage teenager who has no clue what the heck is going on, has been recruited as a bit actor. An imaginary pacifier is handed over. A crappy piece of Disney Merch is handed back. Queue trumpets.

Back to that whole moving thing…By the time we complete the trek to the car, it’s getting dark and there is no way I can do the drive to the cottage. I activate plan …C? Or was it plan Z? Operation-Save-Me-Now involves calling M, who is probably 15 minutes into an 18-minute TED talk. I tell him we are joining him at the hotel that is hosting the company retreat. Like it or not. After a day that has lasted, give, or take, 10,000 hours, we arrive at the hotel.  This is a swanky, corporate hotel located in a business park and is not intended for small children, dogs or insane mothers. This is very, very, VERY exciting for the girls. Unfortunately, hotel excitement for children involves a lot of loud exclamations and running up and down the hallways to check out such miracles as ice machines and …. hallways? Seriously, what’s so fun about hotel hallways? Less 30 seconds after using the “magic card” to enter our room, the front desk calls up with a noise complaint. All I want is to crash on the bed and/or have a good stiff drink, but I need to find a way for the girls to get their Ya-Yas out. Enter the other most fun thing that could ever happen in the whole wide world to a small child (and the opposite of all those things for the accompanying parent): the hotel pool. C still can’t swim, so I don't have the luxury of staying clothed and pretending to “watch” (“Look at me Mommy!!”) from the sidelines. I must go into the chlorine bath. In this case (again corporate hotel) the pool is cold-plunge-cold, has no shallow end and zero fun things to do. It is occupied by some EVP type who is working off his sales dinner booze consumption by doing laps. He is not thrilled with the arrival of our brood. I couldn't care less. 

Torturous pool excursion complete, we make our way back to the room. I am seriously H-angry, way past my wits end, devastatingly tired, and look like a drowned rat. I am trying to shepherd the girls back to the elevators which are diabolically located on the far side of the opulent hotel lobby (again with the sadistic architects). Suddenly I hear my name being called...by one voice...and then another...and then another. Turns out that while we were cannonballing the visiting dignitary in the “must be 18 or over” hot tub, a buffet dinner had been set up along the corridor between the recreation facilities and the elevators. I have emerged wearing a tea towel into a space occupied by the entire staff of our company - every single one of whom knows me and feels compelled to say “Hi”. I am desperately trying to wave them off when the girls discover the dessert table. I must then stand around chit chatting in my bathing suit and unshaven legs, pretending that I am not in my bathing suit and unshaven legs.

Let me remind the reader that this is all the SAME DAY. At this point I believe I just ran away.  I may have crumpled into a pile of goop. I really don't know. I have blocked it out, and it shall stay in the mind-vault forevermore. As will, apparently, the location of my graduation watch, which I didn’t even notice was missing until years later. About as long as it took to recover from that day.

I resolutely believe that the watch is still waiting “Somewhere Safe” to be found...along with a C’s special stick, and a bag of stickers. 

Hopefully, my lost mind is there too.

——————

[1] I am also the designated “Fixer” - most annoyingly, and frequently, this means unknotting necklace chains and rethreading drawstrings.

[2] Inversely, anything on a top shelf might as well be on the moon as far as I would know/or could access. I have lived with very tall people for all my adult life. It is a fun existence that I call “I’m Tall, You’re Short” and involves me having to constantly jump to retrieve items that then invariably fall on my head.

[3] One of many parenting crutches that I had no qualms about, but that apparently 50% of the busy-body public felt the need to share their opinions on with me. For the record: their teeth are fine.

[4] See the Impersonating Magical Beings stories.

[5] For the curious, C picked a Polly Pocket rip-off Ariel kit that came in a clam shaped bag. S, two years prior, picked a Lady from Lady and the Tramp stuffy. H didn't get anything because we were clueless about everything for her. H did have Fuzzy Elmo chair that was awesome, so we’ll do some revisionist history and say she got that.