Found

Awhile back, I very cleverly hid some things from myself.  Actually, I wasn't hiding them from myself at all.  There were thieves in the area, and since my parents' house had gotten broken into fairly recently, when I heard about them, I took some of my favorite pieces of jewelry and put them in places where they'd be "safe."

Then I promptly forgot where I put them.

Skip forward several months.  I started to want those pieces to wear.  It was always early in the morning as I was getting ready to go to school, and I would always be frantically pawing through the place where I keep my accessories looking for this or that.  The desired item was never there.  I would go to see if I'd perhaps removed it in my bedroom and left it on the small secretary in that room.  Nope.  No dice.  One morning, I even took out the luggage I took to Louisville to see if I'd accidentally left it packed from my trip to the AP reading.  I simply could not remember where I'd put the items I wanted.

Today, as I was getting dressed to go somewhere, there was a particular item that I really wanted.  It had been a gift, and it bothered me that it was now gone.  When I got home, I decided I would systematically tear the house up until I either found the missing things or finally convinced myself that I had left them somewhere and they were gone for good.

I looked for about twenty minutes, pulled things out of cabinets and drawers, emptied all the places I thought I might possibly have placed them, and finally everything I had been so frustrated over was back in my hands again.  It took pulling things out of dark corners and making a huge mess, but it's done.

I thought about the whole process as I gently sorted through the little box that held all the pieces I'd been looking for for so long.  Fear had made me look for what I'd thought of as safety.  I'd taken something precious, something I treasured and enjoyed the use of and had hidden it away because I was afraid that it would be taken by those who were cruel, those who only sought to destroy.  In that quest to protect it, I'd come very close to losing it.  I certainly had gotten no pleasure from it, no use of it, nothing good from a good thing during the time it was supposedly "safe."  It simply sat idle and worthless even though it was filled with things of value, things capable of bringing joy.

I know I'm an English teacher and we're terribly, almost chronically, prone to seeing symbolism under every rock and shrub, but I don't think it is really much of a stretch here to see the bigger trend.  How often do I shut other parts of me away, hide them to keep them from harm, so worried about them getting broken or misused?  How much of me is sitting like that silver in the dark, well-protected but of no use to anybody?  As I ran the thin chains of a necklace with a quote by Emily Dickinson with words about hope on it, I couldn't help but think about these things.  I suppose finding a couple of pieces of lost jewelry might not seem like much of an impetus for soul searching, but it's odd the things that will bring on a moment of introspection.