You know that parlor game where you name the person, living
or dead, whom you would most like to have dinner with? Well, this is not about
that.
I want to know what happened to the missing piece from the unicorn
puzzle. Also the ibuprofen pill I dropped in the downstairs bathroom last
August. Missing socks are of course a major life mystery.
I don’t have to know about that brown glove that slipped out
of my pocket in Alexandria , or my cell phone
that got left in the movie theater on 72nd
Street New
York City
Lost mail is a whole subcategory for the interrogation. The 6”
x 8” envelope I sent to Rachel on December 12 is tucked behind some postal
machine this very moment, or in the kitchen of one of her neighbors where it
was delivered by mistake. Or maybe it’s in a landfill, crushed against a weekly
circular from Shoprite because someone doesn’t recycle. I want to know.
These were real things in the real world, and they are some
place on this earth. (Or, in the case of teddy, they were some place on this earth.) The Lord of TTHGM knows. Where were
they all the time I was looking? Where are they now?
Until then, I’m doing my part (faith without works is dead, James 2:20). I keep the solo socks in a
special little corner of the sock drawer. I never stop searching for the mugs.
I go to the post office and grill them about the mail.
But I dream of that great day of reckoning, when all will be
revealed.
Marian,
ReplyDeleteI discovered your blog via a Google alert on my wife's name - also Marian Wiseman.
In the 1985 version of The Twilight Zone, the first season had an episode called, "A Matter of Minutes" where a married couple awaken to find their reality being constructed around them. They come to find out that each moment in time is constructed much like a movie set. We move through the sets seamlessly, not noticing the behind the scenes action.
The things that go missing from our lives are simply things that the constructors forgot or ran out of time to include in the particular moment in time. Continuity errors, if you will. Sometimes they will reappear moments later and sometimes they will disappear forever.
Hi Auntie!! Love the blog! Oh and happy (belated) birthday!
ReplyDeleteThis is perfection, the words, the images and the way you've laid it out.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I, too await the day of reckoning. Except, when I get there, will I care any longer about that missing roll of film? Yet another unanswerable mystery.
xx
Of COURSE you keep the solo socks in a special drawer...just like me!
ReplyDeleteNow, about where you hide other things...are at least used to hide things. (Remember when Sears deliverymen arrived while you were on the telephone?) One of my favorite, funniest memories!
I'd like to know where my original comment went. I had a great comment about my socks that can never be recaptured. For the record, I have a sox box under the dresser. I think you got the special sock space idea from me. Confirm or deny?
ReplyDeleteI am SO denying that. don't you even REMEMBER at your first Austiin apt when I helped organize your drawers and I think I set up a nice bag for you to put the singletons in.
ReplyDeleteO.k., you get me commenting a blog for the first time in my life: I love it!
ReplyDeleteI remember better than you--you mated my socks on that trip to Austin but I already had a little box for the singletons I bought on sale from Target. I do not remember any time when I was living at home that you had a sox box. I'm taking credit for this one.
ReplyDeleteGosh, you hit a nerve here. In 1979 (!), the 11-year-old me carefully carried five rolls of finished film from my Instamatic camera to the Bradlee's near my house in Groton, Conn. When I eagerly tore into the colorful envelopes two weeks later (YOUR PHOTOS ARE HERE, it said), there were only 72 pictures tucked inside. You heard that right: 2 rolls @ 36 prints per roll = 72. Where on God's green earth have the other pix gone? Who else could possibly care about my childhood trip to Antigua in the way I did? I know they are in landfill now. And I am still p.o.'s 30 years later. (See, your post made me feel 1 percent bitter, 99 percent understood. Thanks, M!)
ReplyDelete