Although we are a cat family, we dearly love dogs.
So we are always pleased to meet up with one.
This lovely chap was in a car at the post office. Its owner returned before I could introduce myself.
But we pulled out right behind their car and followed it down Main Street. The dog barking all the way.
It reminded me of riding around on a Sunday afternoon with my aunt in her zappy red Sunbeam Alpine. With the top down, we’d race off with her two wicked Cocker-spaniels, Wendy and Jill, barking their heads off. Somewhere there is a photograph, but of course I cannot find it.
.
How is it that the item you look for is never to be found, but the moment you go looking for something else, the item you were searching for two weeks ago is now in plain sight?
This happens to me all the time.
My father had what I assume is called a “minimiser”. The opposite of a magnifying glass. He used it when he painted large pictures. It ended up in my possession along with his antique stapler and a penknife that always resided in my mother’s handbag.
She carved many bits of fruit with that knife.
.
Items of very little value, except that they belonged to my parents.
Apparently, you need to give up your expectation of ever finding such items, because not long after I abandoned the search, the penknife turned up.
There was still no sign of the minimiser. It had been in a set of office drawers with similar items that I scarcely use. It was always there. It had no purpose or reason to ever be anywhere else.
Until one day I wanted to look at it. Not there.
Did it matter? Not in the least, but that did not stop me from obsessing about it. High and low I searched.
.
Had I given it to someone? Why would I? Who would even want such a thing?
It must be in that set of drawers. I kept going back, pulling out all the drawers. The more I looked, the more it wasn’t there.
A mystery. I hate losing things and generally don’t, but I seem to be awfully good at misplacing them. In my ideal world, I know exactly where everything is.
The way to accomplish this would be to throw out all my boxes of “stuff”. End of problem. All gone.
But can I force myself to do it?
.
When I left Washington, I was obliged to have a serious purge and there was no time for second thoughts. Have I missed any of those things I cast off? I can’t even remember them.
Periodically I get stern with myself, sit down with a box and start to weed my way through and that’s often when I’ll find that item I was looking for weeks ago.
Going through memories for an hour, or until my stamina runs out is mostly a pointless exercise.
When it all gets to be too much, I shut the box, shove it back in the cupboard and forget about it till next time. Hopeless.
.
Why hang on to a thousand not very good and fading photographs of pets or people from the past? It’s not as if I shall remember them less. It’s a psychological hang-up. My mind insists that throwing out the images is tantamount to throwing out the person or pet depicted.
Note I said mind not Brain.
Mind is governed by my heart which is a soppy thing, as you may have noticed. It holds me back from doing what I know is sensible.
Funnily, I never had this realisation before, yet it is so obvious.
It occurs to me that my best moves have always occurred when I have allowed Brain and Mind to cancel each other out and simply went with my gut.
This I must ponder some more…..
Meanwhile, I had written off the “minimiser” as gone, a mystery.
Last week I had occasion to open the drawer looking for something else and there it was.
There are few items in that drawer and I had searched it countless times….
How was this possible?
.
The same day I found it, I went to make a note in my date book and instead of March 4th, I carelessly wrote it on June 4th. Dad’s birthday.
OK. So this was a message.
So far I have not worked out what it could be.
Dad was fond of complicated puzzles.
.
Back to things getting lost…
The first time I lost one of my possessions, I was four years old.
My teddy bear had fallen close to an electric heater and got scorched which greatly displeased me. It was no longer perfect!
Shortly after, I was taken to the London Zoo dragging the disgraced teddy with me.
When we got home and it was discovered that teddy was lost, I was disconsolate. I wailed. I felt guilty that I had not loved my teddy enough!
Told you I was soppy. That’s where it began.
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Overall, I don’t seem to have truly lost many things. I can almost always account for what happened to a misplaced item and I can be satisfied with this. Mysteries unsettle me.
When I moved to Washington in 2000 all my possessions eventually turned up after a spot of bother with the charlatan who contracted to ship my car. The only thing he shipped was my payment into his pocket.
So how does a single framed picture not turn up?
It was packed with other pictures.
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It was a Mola. Fabric art from Panama similar to this.
It was different. It was cheerful. I loved it.
Vanished, never to be seen again.
A mystery.
Goodness, Carolyn, your life could come straight from Agatha Christie’s books!
Joanna
I love that Mola art and am now absorbed in discovering more!
Oh do not dispose of any of your pictures! I love when you share them here with us!’
I have boxes of old printed photos which ended up in a terrible muddle when I suddenly decided to move from Washington. I need to separate them out into categories….will I? Hmmmm….
Some profound questions here. Lost objects. Lost people. Memory and the mind.. Scorched teddies and childhood trauma. And the importance of the transitional object, and- loved pets.
Perhaps it is all related to separation anxiety? It is interesting to learn how people interpret what I write when I let my mind ramble.
I’m glad you found the minimizer. Can you come and try to find my herb chopper, please?
When we were still living in London, I decided I needed a herb chopper. Even though I was doing very well using a large knife for herb chopping, the herb chopper became an object of desire. Lovely wooden handles, a curved blade that rocked on its special base, all would add joy to the preparation of ingredients. I put it in a cupboard in the small kitchen, and when I came to use it, it was gone.
That was in 2006. Seventeen years later, I have still never found it.
Best wishes, Pete.
Isn’t it annoying! One can always get a new one, but that is not the point!
Our spaniels also barked like that when we drove, but only when we drove to the beach with them. When we drove far to visit my parents, they were quiet and in their baskets (they could perhaps deduce from the suitcases that we were going to visit somewhere). Animals are smarter than we think! I don’t lose/misplace my stuff a lot, but Berto is very good at it. Then he would always come and ask me, “Where do you think I put it?” … and normally I’ll walk directly to the “lost” item! For him that’s a mystery 😁.
Hah, that’s funny. Sometimes I ask myself: “If I was a ….(whatever is missing) where would I be?” Not nearly as efficient as you!