No Joy

Well...it finally happened! My most prized possession has gone missing and I don’t know how I shall cope without it! I noticed its absence about five minutes ago and the furtive search for it has yielded nothing. Zip. Na-da. I know for a fact that I left it sitting on the kitchen counter between the microwave and the kitchen sink. It couldn’t have fallen down the drain because it is too large. It has great sentimental value to me because my dead mother gave it to me just a day before the car accident took her life. It is just a trinket, really. But it symbolizes our turbulent 

relationship. That’s the way it is with mothers and daughters. Love and fight equally fierce. The pangs I feel now that the last thing she gave me is lost is overwhelming. She’s been gone only a short time. The funeral was just a couple of weeks ago.

Think! I must think! Where else could I have left it? I take a few deep breaths and stand facing the sink...staring at the spot where I usually kept it. The empty spot mirrors the emptiness in my heart. Slowly and sadly I start to look everywhere. I start with the kitchen. It is not in any of the cupboards, cabinets, or drawers. I even look in the oven and refrigerator. It’s not in the pantry, either. Where could it be?

I expand my search to the living room. I open each cupboard door and drawer in the china hutch. Again, nothing. I do the same with the buffet with the same results. I even look in the tiny drawers in my antique sewing machines. There is absolutely no sight of my beloved trinket! Sadly, I start in on the bathroom searching each cupboard and drawer with the same results. I move on to the bedroom. I look in each drawer, the closet...even searching the pockets in my pants with no joy. I empty the laundry hamper and peer under the bed. Again, no joy.

I dejectedly sit on my bed and wonder where it could be. The more I ponder, the more melancholy I get. I am soon lost in thoughts of my mother. She gave me the item because we had argued. It was, as usual, a silly argument over the color of my next knitting project. I want a purple sweater and she thought I’d look horrid in that color. I started knitting it anyway and now it sits in my knitting basket...half done, and unfinished. I simply cannot bring myself to finish it. Maybe I’ll take it apart and make something else with the yarn...maybe not. Picturing my mother and her describing how she thought I’d look brings a wan smile to my face and a warming glow to my soul.

I sigh and get up. I start to wander around my apartment. What was once a joyful place, now seemed eerily empty. Mom was gone...for good. No more me having her unwanted interruptions to whatever I was doing as I heard the unique jingle of her keys as she tried to unlock the door. She always managed to get the lock open just as I dashed to answer the door and let her in. Now, that would never happen again. I stand in the living room...expecting to hear that annoying jangle of keys and hoping to see her barge in just one more time. I hold my breath as I wait...for nothing to happen. I dejectedly sat in the nearest chair...one that she loathed and wasted no time in expressing her opinion of that lime green armchair. It was comfortable, I’d argued, and that I would someday recover it. She kept after me to do that, but I procrastinated all the time. 

Enough of pursuing the lost item. For now, it would have to be watched for but I had to go to work. My employer would not understand. They were reluctant to allow me to take time off for her funeral so I knew that they would be loath to let me be late just because I was searching for what they considered to be an inconsequential trinket.

Slowly I make my way across town to the shop where I work. The work was already piled high at my work station when I got there. It was going to be one of those days. There would be no leaving early for me...not any time soon. The day droned on. Eventually the time came to leave the work for the next shift. I flew out the door before my boss, who was walking towards me, could ask me to stay and work another shift. I knew my replacement had not yet arrived...she usually waved at me when she entered the building almost always five minutes early. Today, she was not on time and I wanted to get home to continue the search for my beloved trinket.

As I made my way home and all the way home I kept wondering where it could be. I ran over all the places I’d already searched in my mind. I reviewed what I had done before it went missing. I could not recall moving it...not since the afternoon of Mom’s funeral. That was when I placed it next to the kitchen sink. I wanted to see it and be reminded of Mom several times a day. The longer I drove, the more I wondered where it could be. I remembered seeing it last night before I went out to dinner with my beau. But, I couldn’t remember seeing it when I got home later last night. I surmise that it somehow went missing during the time I was gone. 

Now I’m home again. As I get out of my car, I look around to see if there was a break in of some sort. The front door seems undamaged and so does the garage door. I walk around the entire perimeter of my house. The patio slider still has its security bar in place. I walk around to the laundry room door and it is then that I notice some unknown to me until now scratches on the doorknob. Could it be that someone broke in last night while I was gone or sleeping? Perish the thought!

I cautiously open the laundry room door. I know I didn’t search the laundry room this morning. Slowly I walk in.  There it was! My trinket! I grabbed it and heaved a sigh of relief. My ceramic word was back in my heart. It was painted to look like purple yarn. It was joy!