Last week, I lost a necklace. I put my hand to my neck and realized my necklace wasn’t there. I was 99.9% positive I had put it on that morning. As I searched around my seat, my coat, the parking lot and my car, the percentage fell to 75% sure. In fact, I was hoping to be dead wrong, hoping it was lying on my dresser. When I got home, no luck. I felt like I was losing my mind as well as the necklace. I admit I freaked out a little. Okay, not really a little–a lot. (Losing my perspective is a whole other blog post.)
I know the necklace is only a material thing, not that important in the scheme of things, but I was upset. I thought about the people who have lost their homes and worse in Hurricane Sandy and I was sad for them. Did that help me gain perspective? Not in the moment, not really.
I felt the necklace was a metaphor (Hon, I’m really into metaphors.) for other things I have lost, such as three children who all started college this September and a job I’ve worked at for twenty years that is about to end. I believed that when the triplets went to college, my head would open up, fresh air would rush in and my brain would be rejuvenated. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened.
Back to the necklace search. Losing my necklace reminded me of another time I lost a different necklace. A couple of years ago, before trying something on in a store, I put that necklace on a chair in the fitting room. It was almost closing time so I had to wait until morning to try and find it. If one of my daughters put a necklace on a chair instead of in her pocketbook, I wouldn’t be happy. I was the one who wasn’t thinking, I chastised myself. I rushed to the store in the morning and recovered my necklace. Lesson learned.
Last week, after feeling like I was losing my mind, my daughter and I returned to the scene of the crime (okay, it wasn’t a crime, but I kept saying “scene of the crime” so there it is). We retraced my steps and found the necklace in the parking lot, jump rings and clasp in tact. Yay! And how? How had it fallen off my neck?
I found my necklace but I’ll never be that mom in charge of a constant-house-full-of-children again and I’m not sure what jobs I might find in the future. What I’m really not sure of is when that hand is reaching down from heaven to open up my head so I can clean out the cobwebs in my brain.
I think I’ll stay away from percentages but hopefully, I’ll find a new purpose, a new job and a new perspective in the new year.
Naomi M. Gruer 