Some of my most vivid moments of my mother are of her losing her keys... and then finding them in her purse. Sorry mom, I remember lots of other things too, good things, but I do remember you losing your keys a lot. "Where are my keys?" was the first thing I could expect to hear when we got in the car on our way to school, the grocery store or anything else.
So that panic of losing the keys is never too far away from any of us, I think. At least none of us with big, full purses. I think I lose my keys about as often as my mother did. The difference is I don't ask my teenage daughter, "Where are my keys?" I just try to calmly look for them in the purse where they're supposed to be. And sometimes they're not there. Sometimes the keys are in a coat pocket or on the banister. But usually there are the keys, hiding in a dimly lit corner of my purse.
It really came as no surprise to me the other day when I lost my cell phone. I've lost it plenty of times before. Cell phones are no longer those bulky shiny things that used to stretch our pants pockets. No, mine is a cute little Pixi. It's thin, black and unassuming. And that's why I lose it so often. Once I searched everywhere, even had the neighbor calling me, only to find it 15 minutes later on top of the coffee maker (which is also black). So losing it in my fake black Coach bag (I was recently informed- nicely- that it's a fake, just thought I'd be upfront) was no surprise.
I emptied out the contents of the el-cheapo bag I had gotten as a hand-me-down (kind of hoping it was real but not wanting to ask) but to no avail. There was no cell phone in there. I looked in my shopping bags, not there either. I told Liam I was stressed, he didn't seem affected. I informed Liam and Josh we were all going to have to get out of the car and look for the phone together. The kids were already strapped in. As each mother out there knows, once the kids are strapped in, getting out of the car really is not desirable. I mean, the hard work is done, the wrestling is over and it's time to go home. But no, we had to go back to the store.
And go back to the store we did. We went back to both stores, two times each. We retraced steps. We stopped back at stores we hadn't been to, but maybe someone had turned in a cell phone dropped on the sidewalk? I started to panic. I was wearing a winter coat and it was getting very hot. And I was in a complete state of flusteredness. Liam was very cooperative, for a four year old. He even splayed himself flat onto the filthy store floor to look under shelves for the phone. People started to look at me, not out of helpfulness or even pity but out of fear- who is this crazy lady and her wild children? Why does she keep telling her kid, she's a bit stressed? Why didn't she bring her baby in a stroller? Yes, in my infinite wisdom during this wild goose chase, I had decided to carry Joshua instead of pushing him in a stroller. Because apparently taking the extra 3 1/2 minutes to get the stroller... was out of the question. And this was about the time that Joshua decided to practice his butterfly stroke which involved precisely timed, strong kicks with both legs; folding himself in half and pulling my hair. It was lovely.
At one store we stopped in, while I waited in line, I suggested to Liam that he play with some toys I saw set up for... kids... by the check-out. Unfortunately one of the toys they had set out was a car on a hill. Why they would put that in front of a rack is beyond me. Luckily Liam put the brakes on his accelerating Radio Flyer before he hit the rack. Meanwhile the cashier decided to stop helping her current customer just to get rid of me and take my phone # to look for the lost cell phone.
Here's the mia culpa. After all those times of refusing to panic and thinking myself a calm individual. After all of those times of specifically not rushing to conclusions over lost items ("It was stolen!"). After all of the lost blue tooths, which don't even phase me anymore by the way. After all of this I completely lost myself. Over a cell phone.
And as I resigned myself to this loss in my life, I saw a blinking light and shiny black surface underneath the back end of my car. I saw my cell phone. So naturally, I had Liam sprawl himself out on the parking lot pavement (perfectly safe, I assure you) to retrieve my lost cell phone.
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