Ania doesn’t lose anything.
Those words have been said by my mother for years. I don’t remember the first time she said them to me but I do remember being five and always bringing home both mittens after playing outside in the snow. I would come home and promptly plop myself on the cold tiled floor, pulling my snow boots off. Off came my hat, my scarf, my gloves. Everything perfectly accounted for. It was the same in the summertime. My mom would send me out to play and I’d manage to come home, everything neatly in its place and clean. My brother, according to my mom, wasn’t as good about staying clean. That was me, along with never losing anything.
The first time I nearly lost something I was nine. For my first Communion, my family gave me plenty of rings and jewelry. I’m not sure if it’s a Polish tradition but I raked in the gold. There was one ring in particular I loved. I think it had a tiny ruby in the middle. I loved wearing it. Seeing it on my finger made me feel so grown up. And then one day, it disappeared.
I didn’t blame anyone. I didn’t think it was stolen. It had simply vanished into thin air. Ghosts, possibly. But I was distraught over the idea of losing something, anything. “Ania doesn’t lose anything.” I searched my room, tearing it apart, and to no avail. The ring was gone.
A few days later, I sat at my desk playing with a Polly Pocket castle, one of the real ones that actually fit in your pocket. The phone rang and I grabbed it. My oldest cousin was on the line and to speak to him, someone fourteen years older than me, was a Big Deal. So I held tight to the phone and refused to hang up, even when my mom answered. I sat there, phone in one hand and Polly in the other, listening in. After a while, I grew bored of their conversation but I still refused to hang up. I put the phone to one ear and started rummaging around my desk.
“I FOUND IT!” I suddenly screamed. My poor mom and cousin. I must have broken their eardrums. Somehow, in the corner of my desk, was my ring.
I’ve never lost anything.
There are more stories. Miraculously finding the back of my white-gold earring in a gravel parking lot outside my school. A vanished credit card. Countless hidden phones. The problem is, I can’t determine why. Is it because when I was little, it was inserted into my head that I never lose anything? Or is it because that even when it seems bleak, I keep on looking? And now, by writing this, am I opening up the door to twenty years of never finding anything?
I don’t think so.
