it is found in the quiet unexpected

Several months ago I began losing things. Not completely unexpected and not exactly unlike me, I worried a bit because the items I'd misplaced had some personally significant value but I resigned myself to the 'oh well, there goes another one' that seems to follow me.

I lost my beloved PDA first. No idea where that went, though it had to disappear somewhere between my home and KD's. I think. Or it could have been at class. Or in a parking ramp. Or maybe I left it at a meeting. I first purchased it on a slight whim - but as far as my whims go I have to defend it as fairly well thought out.

I found a great deal through audible.com offering $100 off the cost of the PDA if I'd subscribe to Audible for a year.
'No problem, I'll be wanting to download audible books anyway!', thought I, and the cost of a refurbed Palm Zire 31 became immediately accessible for me as the monthly fee for the Audible subscription was to be taken from my financial account each month rather than in one big chunk. I could do that.

My sweet little Zire stayed by my side through my many sleepless nights. We listened to uploaded books and CDs and all sorts of recorded matter together. The Zire play innumerable games of Solitaire with me. Frankly, even if I could remember the numbers I would never reveal that particular detail, so embarrassed I am of my obsessive Solitaire playing during fretful uneasy nights. My Zire kept a backup copy of a few particular cherished emails and she'd memorized the entirety of my contact list - old folks and new. Everyone was in there. One of the features I miss the most is the calendar/reminder function. I had reminders for - well cripes, for just about anything I needed to be remembering! I took it along with me outside and used the fold-uppable keyboard (also huge discount find) to work on writing and email. I'd save story ideas. But geez, I'm shot down without the calendar to keep me going.

My favorite Zire moment was when I used her to catch a sneaky photograph while stuck on a hellishly long layover at an airport terminal along about 300 other people, including an asswipe of a contemptuous fellow. He was one of those 'my shit doesn't stink, I'm worth far too much for that to happen' sort of disdainfully attitudinally-challenged people. He bore the fine suit, the leather loafers, the soft buckskin attache case, the wristwatch that dripped 'don't touch me, don't so much as breath..my..air, peon'. Dickhead made someone watch his seat while he left to use the restroom (heavens no, wouldn't want the PREGNANT woman to be able to sit down or anything, noooo). When he returned he didn't realize he had a several-foot-long trail of toilet paper running from the back waistband of his pants, down the back of his leg, ending as a flapping tongue wagging behind him on the floor. The appropriate thing for a kind person to have done at the moment of noticing his potentially embarrassing moment would probably be to quietly have pointed it out to the fellow. I, however, thought the man a complete jackass and preferred, instead, to use the camera function of my beloved little Zire to snap a picture of the guy standing in line with his toilet paper tail while he, in turn, waited to crab at the helpless airline employee (again).

I did love that Zire, oh yes I did.
And then ... one day ... she was gone. Forever.
I hope to replace her eventually - perhaps with her big sister the T/X.
Maybe...

The second strange batch of lost important things happened a few months after I misplaced the Zire. I think I must have been washing dishes or gardening; something that would have required me to remove my watch and two special rings. I remember little about the day other than a few details:
- I removed the fidgety ring first.

I bought that one in the Bahamas back on the first official vacation I ever took with a friend all by myself without my wee babe on my hip ~ circa 1994. The rolling triple gold banded ring was the one item I purchased just for me. I'm not generally a good me-bargainer but I managed to haggle the seller down to a reasonable price and I've proudly worn the ring nearly every day since. Because the yellow, pink and white gold bands are all interwoven it also makes a remarkably handy toy to have on hand (literally!) when I'm fidgety. Having this ring on my hand reminds me to be braver than I think I'm capable of being and it reminds me that I owe myself adventure --oh, and also of being grateful for whatever health care I EVER have in the U.S. after the vomitous night in the Bahamian emergency room, though that's probably a story best left for another post or, perhaps, not at all.

- I remember that I removed my so-pretty funky artsy S. ring next.

After meeting online, we had a long courtship during which I chased her through jungles and into outer space. We emailed and talked and IM'ed daily. DAILY. What a heap of amazing things I learned from, and due to, S.
I am so much more a global citizen because of her. I learned that 'liberal party line' doesn't necessarily taste the same in all countries. I got to love liberally and be loved the same way. I learned to read the temperatures in both Farenheit and Celcius (and to spell both words correctly). I visited Australia. She visited the United States. I found out what a mindfuck distance can be, how horrifying ones own mind can be in creating obstacles that might not actually exist, in an effort to cling to what feels like the only important thing in the universe. I learned to flex my ankles on those 26 hour flights across the US and over to Oz so I wouldn't develop DVT. I learned, possibly the hard way, that she was who she was and didn't want to or wasn't capable of changing as drastically as might have been necessary for us to be a successful coupling. And while I never did find the kind of end of sentence/end of relationship punctuation I so desperately sought, I can look back now and sorta see how she ignored a whole bunch of super important things like facts, but in the end she fell onto the sword for me. That might be the take-away.
That, and this lovely ring I picked out during her visit to Wisconsin. We both picked rings to have something to have of one another when we were apart, but because we had such very very (VERY!) different tastes, I picked mine and she picked hers. Then, the other person purchased the self-chosen ring and gave it to the wearer with some formality. We remain close despite parting as partners. She holds her emotional cards closer still to her than even I manage mine, so I cannot know how done with me she might be, how past my shenanigans she is, how much frustration I caused her. She has met someone new and is deleriously happy together with her new girlfriend, looking forward to sharing a home within the next few months. I think part of what was so important was the physical presence of a Someone Else. I could not provide that to S., something for which I will eventually forgive myself (what else can I do?) but I will most likely continue to regret for years. At any rate, we didn't work well together but I truly am glad for S. that she has found someone else with which she is comfortable and from whom she feels loved. And well, I suppose it goes without saying that I also have found someone -local- who loves me, with whom I am comfortable and with whom I will eventually set up a home with. In a couple of years, maybe. Yet being with and loving KD does not mean that I can't wear the ring that meant a lot to me, the prettiness of which becons me to distraction at times.
This ring I chose was a wide gold 'comfort fit' band with a narrow dotted "marching ants" pattern along the top and bottom edges of the band. In the center section between the marching ants dances what look to me like stars and moons and other astral fairies, all moving and active, proceeding around my finger.
I hold the universe in my hand just as The Uuniverse holds me in Its hand.

- I remember that I slipped off my gold wristwatch. I dangled one end through the center holes of the two rings and once it had passed through both I fastened the ends of the watch together.

- I remember putting the three items into some sort of a pocket that I thought would be a safe place for keeping them.

Days turned into weeks turned into I guess months and I realized they were really and truly lost. I checked through the zippered pockets of handbags and purses. I checked my backpack. I checked pants pockets and dresser drawers. No watch, no rings. Every few weeks I would re-remember that I had stopped looking and would take up the search with renewed vigor, but I'd never find what I was missing. I unearthed all sorts of interesting things I had no interest in finding, but I could not find those three pieces of jewelry.

Finally, after some Bad Days last week I decided to take a hot shower. I thought soaking off the sheister attitude couldn't do anything but help. Standing under the shower head, I wondered over and over where I possibly could have put the rings and watch that I hadn't already looked. I'd worried that I might have accidentally forgotten to check the inner zipper pockets of some purses I'd donated to Goodwill a couple of months back.
'Maybe someone else now has my rings and I will NEVER EVER SEE THEM, NOT EVER AGAINNNNN', I panicked. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

While water trickled down over the top of my head it occurred to me that I had reached a fork in this lost items road. It wasn't a remarkable thing, it was simply part of the process of thinking the thing through, y'know? There really were only two ways to handle this situation, I figured: continue panicking and freaking out over what I had fucked up and could not un-fuck or somehow try to figure out a way to let them go. Just let them go, out whereever they were - whether they were on a strange woman's arm or in the bottom of a garbage bin or in a closet or in the public landfill - I could lift up thanks for having had them and then let them go on.

And then I laughed at myself standing there in the shower thinking such hippy thoughts because c'mon, that's just too much even for me. Despite the audacity of the ohms, I couldn't shake that idea: Let them go. So I did.

I have no idea how or why or when exactly, but by the time I stepped out of the shower- and after having shed tears- I had said goodbye and be well to the three little silly but important-to-me pieces of jewelry and I was really truly okay with that.
They were gone and I was content to let them be that way.

Next lost item: Monday I was digging around in my school backpack, trying to find a scholarship check that I didn't know I had until only recently (Turns out, it helps to open the mail with some regularity. That's the lesson there). Not that I thought I'd stuffed the check into my backpack because I haven't opened the backpack since mmmm, some time in early December. But still, when you're trying to find Something Important, you cover all your tracks, right? Right.

Dig-a, dig-a dig-a ... what's this?
Well, know how right there in the third zippered pouch there's that velcro flap? And what do you suppose I found inside that? Woohoo, if you said the check???? Wrong~

A watch and two rings, that's what.