Lost Things

Here is a partial, list-in-progress of things I have lost, going back as far as I can remember:

My favorite doll, Bess
Soft Blanket
My dark denim jacket
Three retainers
My turquoise dangly earrings
The blanket my grandmother knit for Lily (actually, someone else lost this, but it is lost to me)
My favorite blue cashmere sweater
My passport, at a train station in France
My passport, somewhere in my apartment
My glasses, which had been discontinued when I went to replace them
Soft Blanket
My first red clogs
A black dress from the Barney's outlet with batwing sleeves and a flattering fit
A necklace my grandmother gave me that had been given to her by my grandfather
A bracelet my mother gave me that she had bought on her one big childhood trip
A piece of fur I cut to remind me of my childhood cat
My father's stamp collection
The car, many times
My neighbors' keys, while I was cat-sitting their cat
My father's keys, in the bottom of Walden Pond, in the middle, where it's very deep, while I was cutting class
A wallet, which I eventually got back
Three wallets, which I never saw again
A suede jacket with leather trim that was my best friend's in high school
My thesis reports from graduate school
My college thesis
A letter received by fax that I'd wanted to keep
A Steiff stuffed horse that my grandfather had named Flicka for me
My Riverside Shakespeare
Some really fantastic green sweatpants

I could go on, and may at some point, but I will stop now because the list at that serves its purpose for me right now. I am one of those people who likes dividing the world into two groups, just for fun, but I think it's safe to say that there are, actually, two groups of people in the world: those who lose things, and those who don't. I also think it's safe to say that I am in the former.

I have gotten better, much, much better. I used to lose things all the time, nearly every day. In fact, for years, it was a joke in my family and among my peers that I never knew where anything was--that if you gave something to me, I would lose it within hours. Now, I make a conscious effort, but it is in my blood: I lose things still.

The group of those who lose things has sub-categories. One of these is: People who lose meaningless things and don't really care or ever think about these things they've lost again. I am not in this sub-category. I remember almost every single thing I have ever lost, what it looked like, where I was when I lost it or realized it was gone, and why I will never fully recover from its absence. In other words, once lost, the things I've lost sort of haunt me, appearing on occasion as mirages in the most unlikely places, as though to taunt me.

And my losing now occurs largely on a smaller scale, which is less drastic but almost more irritating. For example, once Caroline and I lost a car in a parking garage in Hawaii. After hours, we found it again, but it happened once, and made for a good story, as well as a lesson in writing down your parking spot in garages the size of Oahu. But one night last week, I stopped by a neighbor's to drop off some mail and in the space of ten minutes lost my keys, my baseball cap, my own mail, my bag and Annika, in their apartment. Okay, I didn't actually lose Annika, but it took me a few extra minutes to find her, behind a bathroom door.

Where am I going with THIS? I'm not sure yet. But I can't get a poem by one of my favorite poets out of my head, and I think it's trying to tell me something. Here it is, and I will keep you posted:

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.