Lost

I'm feeling a little lost. My head hasn't been fully in the game. There are some things on my mind and it's fine and life goes on, but it's clearly affecting my ability to keep things together. Or maybe I've just reached and exceeded my brain's capacity for keeping track of children and their shit and my shit.

It started two weeks ago when I took the kids to Tar.get on a fine Friday morning. It wasn't unusually crazy, just kind of every day averagely crazy. Pack the diaper bag, grab the snacks, fill the water bottles, change the baby, make a bottle for later, tell everyone to put on socks, find my wallet and keys, okay now shoes, don't climb on there, oh, did you fall off of there and bump your head, take the dog out, watch the dog while I grab the baby, OMIGOD don't eat that, don't let the dog eat that either, where are your socks, did you poop, change Cue's diaper, get in the car, where in the heck did I put my keys, buckle the kids in, strap the baby in, put the dog in his crate, aaaannnddddd breathe. Shit. The bag. And the bottle. And my wallet. Unlock the door, collect necessary paraphernalia, back in the car, all children secured, check! And reverse.

Tar.get. We checked out and rebuckled and battened down and I drove to a really cool playground in the area where I had promised they could play for a while if they listened at the store. Listening being a relative term and standards being somewhat low. As I was unbuckling the first child for what felt like the 100th time that morning, I happened to glance at my left ring finger and my stomach hit my toes like seventeen tons of bricks.

I was wearing my wedding band, but not my diamond engagement ring. I knew I'd put them both on that morning and I knew it was loose because it has fallen off before, but never without me noticing and I also knew, absolutely knew, that most likely it was gone forever.

Fast forward through a lot of cursing and some crying (both by me and by my children when I hightailed it out of the playground parking lot and headed back to Tar.get). The whole time I tried to talk myself down. It's just a ring. It's just a stone. Three stones actually. One beautiful diamond that my husband, the love of my life, slipped on my finger from his knees in a pretty colonial square on the water in Baltimore, Maryland, twelve years ago and two smaller sparkly stones that I added on our tenth anniversary as a trade for my grandmother's earrings that I would never wear.

I adore that ring. It's just a ring. The ring Matt gave me; the ring that reminds me of my grandma. The children are fine, you are fine, it's just a ring. A beautiful, stunning, awesome ring that makes me happy every single day of life and yes, that's true, I would trade it in a heartbeat for anyone dear to me, but ALL MY DEAR TO ME PEOPLE ARE FINE AND OMIGOD I WANT MY RING.

It wasn't at Tar.get. Of course. But don't worry because we'll jump through the crying and sick to my stomach horridness all the way home. I'll just tell you that when we got home I remembered that I'd pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer right before we left and I flew to the laundry room and went through every piece of tiny clothing in the basket, my heart sinking with each empty piece, and then there it was, caught up in a pair of Ess' underwear.

So phew. Right? I'll put it away and take it to the jeweler and have it resized and reappraised and reinsured and all that good, responsible stuff. I won't make that mistake again.

Until the very next Friday. When I absolutely, totally and completely made the exact same mistake in the exact same way for a second time. I'll spare you. Honestly. Here's the short version. I put them on at 7:00 a.m. without even thinking about why I hadn't been wearing them. Repeat all above about packing and socks and children and dogs and buckling and unbuckling, etc., etc. City Hall. Micheal's Crafts. McDonald's. I kid you not.

We pulled into our driveway hours later and I went to unbuckle the baby and sure enough, once again, like a bad episode of Groundhog's Day, I was only wearing my band, not my diamonds.

Is it possible that one person can be this stupid? I didn't even look for it. I put all the kids down for naps and in quiet time and then I sat down at the dining room table and cried. Is there any worse feeling than having no one to blame but yourself?

After a while, I decided to call City Hall and Micheal's and McDonald's, just in case, just because, if I didn't, well I kind of had to do it, didn't I? I couldn't keep the tremble out of my voice, the hopeless, horrified tremble. The kind receptionist took my name at City Hall and promised to look for it. I looked up Michael's number with a lead heart. It probably fell off in a parking lot, or on a sidewalk, or I ran over it and pushed it into the dirt and whatever, does it matter who finds it because it's gone.

Katy answered the phone at Michael's, a sweet, teenage girl, working a minimum wage job. She answered the phone and listened to me choke out that I'd lost an engagement ring and I'd been in their store and would she please take my name and number just in case? Sure, she told me, of course. I could hear her ringing up a customer as she spoke. Wait, she said suddenly, how many diamonds are on it. Three, I answered in the littlest voice possible. Is it set in white gold? YES! Yes it is. I can see it, Katy said, you won't believe this but I can see it on the floor, I see it.

Did you hear that whooshing sound? That is the sound of all the luck and karma and random kindness due to me in my life time getting sucked out of my universe.

You read that right. My diamond engagement ring fell off of my finger in the check out line at Micheal's and I got it back.

I put it away and I haven't worn it since, but that hasn't stopped my rampage of absentminded idiocy. I haven't seen my keys since last Thursday. No idea where to even look. I vaguely remember that Cue might have been playing with them while I took a phone call. Then, Sunday evening my mom left me a message that went something like, "hi, honey, a Justin called me. He has your cell phone? He found it at the mall? Are you alive? Here's his number."

Sunday afternoon I met a friend at the mall and when I left I put Nate in the car and folded up the stroller. The cell phone must have been in the stroller tray because it ended up on the pavement where a lovely young man named Justin picked it up and kindly took the time to call the number labeled, "mom."

Honestly, it's a good thing that internal organs are, in general, firmly attached to your body or I swear someone would see my kidney just randomly laying by the side of the road. Oops! Dropped it! Must have just slid right out of one of those holes. Didn't even feel it. Aha. Also, I regularly panic that I have forgotten to put the baby in the car and he is patiently sitting in his stroller alone in a parking lot.

Yesterday, I met Justin at a Starbucks down the hill. He made me smile. He was a shy, adorable (twenty years ago I would have said HOT!) twenty-ish-year-old. He was thin and tall and he had a shock of dark hair with bright blond highlights over his forehead and one eye, cut in that incredibly trendy, ragged way. He was dressed so shockingly "cool" with so many random zippers and such large boots that I (in my infinite almost-forty uncoolness) honestly thought he looked like he stepped off of one of those Japanese space-travel cartoons. His porcelain-doll-beautiful girlfriend sat next to him at the small table, a streak of bright red perfectly accenting her short, lacquered-black hair.

If I had been twenty, I would have been intimidated by their almost funny trendiness. (Not to mention drooling, honestly, because, oh so cute.) But, as it was, I smiled at him and thanked him and offered to buy him and his friend a coffee and shook his hand when he refused and told him I would pay it forward and he looked down and didn't meet my eyes and nodded and shuffled his feet and then glanced up with big, eager eyes and told me, "it was just like laying on the ground, you know?" I nodded. I knew. He had no idea. I used to be able to keep track of things and then my life exploded and lately it's been all I can do to make sure all of my children are back in the car unmaimed.

But mostly, I thought, oh please, please god, let me raise boys like this. Let me raise quiet, shy men who would take the time to pick up a cell phone in a parking lot, who would realize what it would mean to someone to get it back and not just mess with it or throw it out or use up the minutes making calls. Let me raise young men who would drive to a random Starbucks to meet a random woman who's had a lot on her mind lately and just can't quite seem to keep it together. Let them smile at her like that. Let them be kind.

I don't even know why I'm typing all this out, and in fact if you made it all the way down here you are a hero. Sometimes, it just feels like the world is full of so much random depressing crap and it makes me want to sing these little moments from the roof tops.

Thank you, Katy.

Thank you, Justin.

People are kind. Not all people, I know. Not in every situation. But, overall, for the most part, people are kind. And though I already try, in most situations, to be kind as well, I will try harder. It's important. If only as an example to the little men and women-to-be that I am raising.