I've Lost It

 

Right Under my Nose

Have you ever looked for something that you misplaced?  I have this obsession that I must find anything that is lost or be able to explain its disappearance.  I have often seen the sign: “It’s not really lost, until Mom can’t find it”.  Well, that’s me the sign is describing.  I often prided myself on being able to tell my husband and children exactly where something was located.  It was like I had a compartmental brain that kept track of everything.  That was then.  This is now.  At 65, my mind is not near as sharp in identifying the whereabouts of all things.  Recently, I misplaced a tool that should have been in my garage.  I live alone so I should be the one to have put it in its place.  I faintly remember thinking this is a good “new” place to store the rubber mallet, but now the “new” place escapes my memory.  I went into the garage and looked with my eyes, scouring the shelves and doing a truly thorough job of visibly searching for it.  I looked in all the obvious places and in all of the not-so-obvious places.  I could not locate it.  I looked in the yard, because I could have left it outside accidentally.  Nothing.  I texted my sons to see if perhaps they had borrowed it. Nope.  It should have been highly visible because it has a bright yellow fiberglass handle.  This was really bugging me.  Maybe I threw it out with the yard waste?  I got up the next day and did a much-needed cleaning of my garage, organizing and moving many things around.  Still no luck.  I was almost to the point of giving up, but that never happens.  The next day my son dropped off an extra rubber mallet he had, but it wasn’t the one I was searching for.  I didn’t need a mallet.  I needed to find a mallet.  There is a difference.

 That same evening, I drove in after dark, parked in the garage, got out, turned the corner at the front of my car  ready to open the door to the house and to my surprise, the rubber mallet I had spent so much time looking for was sitting there in plain sight in its “new” place, just where I had put it.  Yes, it was hanging by its rubber head, handle dangling down between the two rolling carts of tools.  I had used many of the tools but had never seen the mallet there among them.  Was I blind?  I guess so because it was right under my nose the entire time.  If it had been the copperhead snake in one of my recent posts, it would have bitten me.  Why so much time and energy spent on finding something that could be replaced for $10?  Well, I guess it is an “obsessed mom” thing. I can accurately, literally and figuratively, say that "I've lost it"! (my mind)

Tammy Harvey

9/10/2025