Lost and Found.

“Ummmm … what is that?”

Six months ago, I stopped tiptoeing around the idea of selling this house. To be fair to me … and to put a dagger through the heart of speculation before he takes his first steps … I was very deliberate about this very large, very important, very exhausting and very expensive step. Selling a house is hard work. Selling a house with pint-sized dictators is harder. Selling a house without a partner to run interference with two pint-sized dictators is harder still. Selling a house where the most difficult moments of your life’s experience played out without a partner to run interference with two pint-sized dictators?

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have, on occasion, felt that he somehow got the better end of the deal.

Six months ago, everything felt right. Actually, it felt right three years ago. 

But a house is more than walls and windows and floors. Memories and momentos are tucked into its corners and crevices and cupboards, snapshots in time to be carefully sorted and sifted through. Even now, after six months of purging and packing, things are turning up where they weren’t before. If I am not watching, the carefully curated treasures of childhood multiply in haphazard arrays. 

Shiny stones. Thousands of tiny rubber bands. Mangled paper clips and duct tape. One sock here, a different sock there. Summer camp artwork. 

Two months ago school ended, that moment when educators around the world erupt in a chorus of joy and eagerly load up their dearly departing students with bags and bags of school-year treasures, trappings and trash. 

Tucked away the very next day in cupboard and closets.

For two months we’ve kept this house spotless, but there’s been something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Like a memory fading, it lingered just beyond my reach. And even as I continued to shed the past and revel in the excitement of the future, there was something in the air left unresolved. Each day it loomed larger and darker, challenging the future I am so breathlessly determined to fulfill, until I couldn’t stand to leave it unfound. 

“Mom (whispering) … please don’t be mad … I think I might have put a banana in my bag.”