Safe Places

 Bedtime was near. I could sense it without looking at my watch or considering the color of the sky outside the window. Despite the upbeat music and constant commotion of the movie, drowsiness weighed down on my eyelids and edited whole scenes right out of my consciousness. This is usually the point at which my husband – having sacrificed a movie with car chases and explosions for my wish for complicated characters and a storyline – will ask if I’m falling asleep.  

Which I will deny out of habit.

And next, he will quiz me on what the protagonist just said.

Of course, I will have no memory of what had transpired.

That’s when a barrelling noise rolled down the stairs and into the room.

This time it was my son who was confronting me, though with a sudden and curiously specific memory:

“Hey … remember when you found my silver bracelet in the hotel room last year sometime and you zipped it into one of your suitcases because you thought I would lose it?”

“Uhhhh. …”

“Do you have it?”

 

As my husband switches off the television and starts his nightly security checks, I pull myself off the couch and to my feet.

I am now fully awake. 

A different movie spools through my brain. I can see the flat-link chain in all the places he’s left it … counters, boxes, the edge of the sink. Some places are familiar … the guest bath, the kitchen, even a toolbox he made in Woodshop that lives in the mudroom and is mostly employed with corralling winter hats and gloves through all seasons. 

I remember the thought that went through my mind when I found his one beloved piece of jewelry dangling from the edge of a shelf in a bathroom nine members of our extended family shared on vacation.

“Hey … listen. I’m just going to put this in my *gherghfunklepperdu, OK. I don’t want you to lose it,”

What is a *gherghfunklepperdu you might wonder?

Well, let’s just say at the time I collected the chain, and slipped it into the *gherghfunklepperdu, it had a more precise name and location.

Half a year later, having combed over every inch of the three bags that were photographically proven to have been among my allotted luggage, and the numerous smaller bags that I pretend keep me organized, I can only conclude that a gherghfunklepperdu is what happens with the details our fixed bearings have gone fuzzy.

This isn’t the first time he’s lost this particular piece. Nor is the first time he’s allowed me to be its trustee, only to have it turn up just as missing.

Which doesn’t give him any more hope in having it turn up one day.

Maybe next time instead of putting stuff we don’t want to lose in a “safe place out of the way,” we could just put it in a place that we have to search more often … like something that has a name like The Important Paper File or a Toiletry Kit or Mom’s Wallet.”

“We’ll find it,” I reassure him, more out of hope than confidence.

My son, pragmatic as he is, shrugs his shoulders.

“Don’t lose sleep over it.”