I Put It Somewhere Safe
I am extremely good at putting things somewhere safe. I am less good at remembering where safety is located.
This is not the same as losing things. Losing things is careless. You leave your sunglasses in a restaurant or your phone in the back of a taxi or your dignity in the comments section of a neighbourhood Facebook group.
I do not do that. I lose things responsibly.
I take the important object in question, the gift card, the spare key, the receipt for something expensive, and think: I should not leave this lying around.
Then I carry it to a place so sensible, so secure and so deeply intuitive that neither I nor any other living person will ever find it again.
This is the last known sighting.
Weeks later, the search begins.
At first, I am calm. Almost smug. I know myself. I would have put it somewhere logical.
This is reassuring for approximately four minutes, until I remember that I am searching for something hidden by a woman who thought she was being logical several weeks ago.
That woman is unavailable for questioning.
She may have been in a hurry. She may have been cleaning. She may have recently read an article about identity theft. She may have been temporarily persuaded that the freezer is an excellent place to store important documents in the event of a house fire.
April Danielle had her reasons. Unfortunately, she left no notes.
I begin with the obvious places. The drawer where the thing normally belongs. The folder where important things belong. The special box where very important things belong. The other folder I created because the first folder had become too full of things I once considered important and can no longer identify.
Nothing.
The problem with becoming more organized is that you create an increasingly sophisticated series of places in which to misplace things.
There is the basket by the front door. The drawer in the kitchen. The cabinet in the office. The file marked HOUSE. The file marked PERSONAL. The file marked IMPORTANT. And the file marked VERY IMPORTANT, which contains a warranty for a toaster I no longer own.
The receipt is not there.
At this point, I widen the search.
I look in my handbags, including the ones I have not used since people wore heels voluntarily. I check every coat pocket. I inspect the console of the car, where I discover six reusable grocery bags, three rolls of dog poop bags and enough parking receipts to construct a small papier-mâché animal.
Still no receipt.
I start opening drawers that could not possibly contain it.
This is an essential stage of every serious search. Once you have looked in all the places where an object might reasonably be, you begin looking in places where its presence would constitute a cry for help.
The linen closet. The bathroom cabinet. The drawer containing birthday candles and orphaned batteries. The basket of cords.
Every household has a basket of cords. No one knows what they connect to. Some predate Bluetooth. One almost certainly belongs to a camera purchased in 2004. There is always a small black adapter that looks extremely important and has never, to anyone’s knowledge, been used.
You cannot throw any of them away because the moment you do, a device you rely on for your livelihood will display a message saying: Please connect proprietary cable.
And you will know exactly which cable it means.
So the cords remain. The receipt is not among them.
By now I am irritated with myself, but not yet prepared to admit I have lost anything. I have simply not located it.
There is a difference. “Lost” suggests chaos. “Not located” suggests an active records-management process.
I move through the house opening and closing cupboards with increasing force, as though the receipt may be intimidated into revealing itself.
I ask aloud, “Where would I have put it?”
This is not a useful question because the answer is obviously somewhere safe, and somewhere safe is now less a location than a private philosophical concept.
I try to reconstruct the day. I remember holding the receipt. I remember thinking I should put it somewhere safe. I remember feeling pleased with myself for doing so.
This confidence is particularly galling. The former version of me did not merely hide the receipt. She congratulated herself. She probably thought, There. Now I’ll know exactly where it is.
I would like to speak to her. Not angrily. Just for five minutes in a locked room.
The search becomes archaeological.
I find a Chapters gift card with $23.17 remaining on it. A cheque I meant to deposit (who gets cheques anymore!?). A pair of earrings I accused the dry cleaner of losing. A photograph of my children looking impossibly small. I find Euros, American dollars and a coin from a country I cannot identify.
I find the spare car key.
This would be excellent news if I had been looking for the spare car key. Instead, it is evidence that at some earlier point I also put the spare car key somewhere safe and then forgot where that was.
I am now being mocked by my own belongings.
There comes a moment in every search when you begin to suspect another person has moved the item. Perhaps the cleaner saw it and tucked it away. Perhaps there has been a highly selective burglary in which someone entered the house, ignored the electronics and jewellery, and stole one receipt while leaving behind a $23.17 Chapters gift card.
You must consider every possibility.
Eventually, I sit down.
This is not surrender. It is strategic thinking. I decide to stop looking, because everyone knows you find things only when you are no longer looking for them.
This is one of the more irritating laws of domestic life, along with fitted sheets never folding correctly and avocados remaining hard until the exact moment they become compost.
I make coffee. I answer an email. I go to my closet to find a document for an entirely unrelated reason.
And there it is.
The receipt. Inside a folder clearly labelled IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS.
This would have been reassuring had I not spent most of the morning looking for the folder itself.
I stand there holding it, flooded with relief and absolutely no new wisdom.
I should probably establish one permanent place for receipts. I should tell the children where it is. I should create a household inventory with photographs, labels and perhaps a small map.
Instead, I put the receipt somewhere I will definitely remember.
Obviously, I cannot tell you where.
~ Danielle