But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

It’s always exciting to receive a gift and pleasurable to procure something new. Whether it’s big or small, expensive or reasonable, exotic, unique or even just a useful or attractive household item, acquiring a fresh new object feels good. If getting things impacts one positively, then it could follow that losing things would only be negative, but life’s more complicated than that.

I clearly remember many objects, some quite significant and others of small value, that I’ve misplaced over the years. I forget about them for a while, until by some association they pop up in my head and once again I search in my mind for how and where I could have lost them. Losing stuff drives me nuts. I blame myself for being distracted, unfocused and flakey and it could haunt me even if the item has already been replaced. I agonize over its actual or sentimental value, which may rise simply due to the fact that it’s lost.

I try the virtual method of retracing my steps, which is kind of like a video game with my starting point as the last time I saw the object. I commence moving like an avatar through the places I passed until the endpoint when I realized the item was gone.

If this imagery doesn’t work, then I am forced to do a physical backtrack, walking backwards from my present location to where I believe I dropped that thing. I play this game daily (or more!) for such mundane but necessary items as my keys, glasses, cell phone or wallet. This is an oft repeated, exceptionally frustrating ritual, which I hate, but seem to be destined to continue forever. Those precious wasted moments from which I clearly learn nothing feel very long, too.

The only goodness to come out of this repetition is the delicious “aha” moment that comes with my discovery of the missing culprit. Yes, I know that calling keys and glasses “culprits” implies that they somehow hid themselves away from view. It gives me a break from constantly implicating myself in this perpetual madness.

Most objects I’ve lost were never found again, but I still remember them clearly even thirty years later. I left a perfectly good point and shoot camera in a taxi cab I got into with my mom in front of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on our way to French Hill. I don’t know how many photos were left undeveloped in the film. I lost a hand painted t-shirt my sister gave me the first time I left home. I had asked her to make it for me, but left it on some train or youth hostel in Western Europe. I dropped a pair of big red prescription glasses while bicycling in Nahariya. I rode back to look for them, but since then they’ve only been seen in photos taken that day.

I lost my gold wedding band a few years ago. I had rarely removed it, keeping it on in my sleep, when I cooked and bathed, taking it off only when necessary. Partly sentiment and partly habit, its simplicity felt right on my finger, neither loose nor tight, it was just comfortable and I was accustomed to it, but I also must have figured that if I wore it I wouldn’t lose it. When I did remove it, I would place it carefully in a spot where it could be easily seen.

One day it was gone, off my ring finger, not on the tiny dish by the sink, nor in the pretty bowl on my nightstand. I frantically searched the sheets, the floor, the drawers by my bed. I shook out papers and books. Not once, but again and again every now and then. One day, two years later, the gold band appeared in a far corner of my bedside drawer. Perhaps the contents had shifted, finally revealing the missing ring, but I was convinced this was nothing short of a miracle. It was a most welcome relief and resolution to my long puzzlement over this mysterious loss.

Recently I lost a pretty new pair of purple prescription glasses. It was a spontaneous purchase; I already had two nice pairs, but I fell in love with these. I wore them every day for six weeks, keeping them clean and safe. Then I rode the train home late one night and tiredly stowed them away in my bag. I took a taxi from Valley Stream, walked in the door, emptied my bag and noticed they were gone. I searched my hallway, the train station, the taxi stand. Although I failed in my last ditch effort to reclaim my glasses, I felt much better after my inquiry at the LIRR lost and found office by the entrance to track 13.

I riffled through boxes storing hundreds of lost glasses, which were kept by containers holding hundreds of keys, along with receptacles storing hundreds of cell phones. Though I had no luck, I felt at one with thousands of other commuters, people like me, who lose stuff. I didn’t feel flakey, distracted or unfocused anymore, only human.

May we all find what we’re looking for!

Miriam Bradman Abrahams is Cuban born, Brooklyn bred and lives in Woodmere. She organizes author events for Hadassah, reviews books for Jewish Book World and is very slowly writing her father’s immigration story. She can be reached at mabraha1@optonline.net