Lost and Found

My earliest memory is of being lost. We were on a family holiday somewhere in Devon, enjoying one of the long sandy stretches of paradise that populate the coastline in that part of the country. I’m not sure how old I was. A toddler still, but old enough to be left in the not-so-watchful care of my two rangy siblings whose attention, perhaps inevitably, was drawn away at the rockpools, the shrimps and catfish darting in the clear waters proving way more interesting than a chubby pre-schooler who couldn’t keep up.

I recall nothing of being lost apart from the woman who found me. Her triangular headscarf – red with white polka-dots – is seared into my memory along with her kind face and warm hand as she walked the ocean edge with me, looking out for a panicked parent. And perhaps I remember my mother running down the beach, slender and stylish in her black high-waisted, low legged bikini with the white trim. Perhaps I remember her, or perhaps I have written than in from photographs of that time, the mind can be tricksy like that.

I have a suspicion that other memories were logged deeper in my consciousness. Panic. Fright. Anxiety. Recorded in a place beyond words, kept for future reference, to be hauled out should such a terrible thing ever happen again.

Which of course it did. Getting lost is a strength of mine.

When I was fourteen, I wandered too far across the nearby fields, down over the railway bridge, weaving through the housing estate to reach the big lake. The open expanse of water and calm where I watch the pond-skaters skimming across the surface and the minnows shadowing them underneath. I left it too late to return of course and in the fading light of an early autumn evening the housing estate buildings all started to look the same, their grid of parallel roads creating a maze I struggled to navigate.

I don’t know how long I walked, the panic building with each turn that refused to reveal the path back to the bridge; my breathing and footsteps growing more rapid as the brick tenements and the darkness closed in. Even finding the bridge would have been little comfort since there were still the fields to cross, and though I don’t remember those parts of the journey home, I know I must have made them, as I do recall the telling off I received on arrival. Standing in front of our fireplace, shivering in my shorts with dried tear-tracks on my face as my father talked loudly, my mother watching on, his finger wagging in my general direction.

I knew, even then, that it was fear speaking not anger, as I stood in silence watching my own anxiety reflected in their worried faces.

The year I turned thirty I got lost inside myself. The years of panic buried deep inside welled to the surface and three months of my life passed in a haze. Only moments from those months stay with me: holding a pillow to my face so I could wail loudly without worrying the neighbours; walking the dog round the park in the company of a compassionate friend; drinking happily in the evenings when the anxiety subsided; starting all over the next day. I tried to ride it out as an independent adult, staying at my flat in London and attempting occasional returns to work despite being signed off. After three months I threw some clothes in a bag and caught a train home.

“Why don’t you write,” my mother said, “Writing always seemed to help you.” I was sitting at our dinner table staring forlornly into my tea when she put the pocket notebook down next to me. “It’s got a pen holder too.” I stared at the black cover, a flashback of childhood in my mind; lying on my belly on the grass, my knees bent and ankles crossed in the air, scribbling words happily in an old exercise book, making up stories just for fun.

“Did you get a pen too?” I picked the notebook up and turned it, studying the mottled black leather cover before pulling at the elastic that held it shut. “There’s plenty in your Dad’s office if you haven’t your own,” my Mum threw back from the kitchen where she was now peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. I murmured inwardly, I’m fussy about pens and could just imagine my Dad’s collection of hotel biros that barely work.

“Mum?” I called at her back through the doorway.

“Mum??” louder this time, like an insistent teenager.

“Yes?”

“What’s going on with these pages?” I spoke loudly across the distance. The last quarter of the book was held together firmly, layers of masking tape enclosing the pages to create a single wad.

“Hmmm? Those? Oh, that’s a surprise.”

“You mean you did this?”

“Yes.” Pause. “When you fill the whole book, you can open those pages and see what’s inside.”

“Well, it’s pretty small, that won’t take me long.”

“We’ll see”

“Can you take me into town to get a pen?” I stood behind her in the kitchen now, brandishing the notebook like a brimstone preacher with an undersized Bible.

“Use one of your Dads.”

“They’re all rubbish.”

“They’re fine, stop making excuses.”

So off I trundled, in search of a quality pen. And my sanity.

I wrote for days. Filling pages with the events that preceded my three missing months. The collection of small things that had knocked away at my façade of mock adulthood, like a wrecking ball at a building site, until my whole mental house had crumbled. I felt like the lost child I’d once been, perched high upon the rubble, surveying the pieces and wondering where on earth I could start if I were to re-build. There was grief within that place but also hope, relief. At least now I could stop trying to be someone I wasn’t, even if I didn’t yet know what the alternative looked like.

Despite my prolificacy, the sealed pages remained consistently ahead of my pen. This frustrated me at first since I wanted to attain my goal, but eventually it became a comfort as I let go of the end point and started to simply enjoy the process. In time, as I recovered, my writing waned and I discovered other ways to nurture myself. I still returned to those endless pages from time to time, but eventually the notebook found its way into some out of sight place and was forgotten.

I’m forty-four now, and this time I’m lost within my own life. The years of re-building have included acquisition; a cottage near the sea, a car to run, clothes, computers, career, a companion to love in our own perfectly-imperfect way, and a cat. All lovely things yet still I wake these mornings with the feeling that I mislaid something important along the way, and in those quiet dawn moments I yearn to pack a few belongings in my old rucksack and journey to unknown places. It must be the freedom of youth I miss, the freedom of life without responsibilities.

My mother died seven years ago, the secondary cancers proved too much for the doctors and she snuck off one day in her sleep whilst no one else was home, before my Dad could call us children to come say our last goodbyes. She had never mentioned the notebook again, never asked if I reached the surprise she left me, and so it remained forgotten, packed away in the depths of my garage.

Until this week when my father reminded me. Despite slowly fading into the fog of Alzheimer’s, he has these moments of lucidity, often sharper in clarity than he was before. We were sitting lazily in the sun lounge at his care home, reminiscing about Mum, when he looked over at me, his watery eyes studying me over the top of his reading glasses as if seeing me anew. “She gave you that notebook,” he stated. “Did you ever finish writing in it?”

My partner found me that evening, hauling out boxes and old furniture, tools and empty flower pots, all covered in years of dust and cobwebs. I was nearly at the back of the garage, having carved a path through the junk to where my metal storage trunk still sat. The one I had packed with sentimental things when I left London. The one Dad painted dark green with my initials in bright white contrast on top. I could picture the notebook in there, nestled amongst childhood toys I’d been unable to part with and relics from my travels abroad.

“What are you doing?” He stood outside the garage doors, surveying the mess I had created.

“Looking for something.”

“Do you need help?”

“No, I’m fine,” I answered, knowing his fear of spiders made this a deeply unwanted task for him.

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh, just something my Mum gave me, years ago.”

Silence.

“I’ll be in in a bit,” I added. I know he yearns too. We need a change of pace, a new adventure, something to break up the routine of work, eat and sleep. “A change is as good as a rest,” my mother would say. We talk of travelling, or studying, or re-training, anything to find something that would bring more joy. But spare cash is hard to come by these days, so we stay as we are.

“Shall I start dinner?” he asks as he turns to leave.

“Sure.”

Lifting the final boxes off the top of the trunk I feel a sense of excitement building in me as I contemplate the notebook and the mystery section I never reached, never opened. Crouching down before the trunk I sweep the dust off with my hands, tracing the unfaded lettering emblazoned on top.

The lid opens easily, and my first doll stares lazily back at me, her heavy lidded eyes opening as I lift her up and set her to one side. The notebook is underneath and I pull it out, noticing the one good pen I managed to persuade Dad to part with still sitting in the holder on the side. I take the pen out and find the first blank page, scribbling on the paper to see if it will work. At first it scratches into the page until the rollerball gives and the ink starts flowing again. "Hello," I write. Squinting at the page in the gloom of the garage, I think my eyes must be failing me, the ink appears to be moving on it’s own, dancing around the page.

I carry the notebook outside, digging a Stanley knife from the toolbox and sitting on one of the discarded chairs in the last bit of the evening sun. Studying the book I see that all the pages are now filling up with my writing, even more pages than there were before, so that they are straining at the cover as if to escape. The mystery section is also fit to burst, the masking tape starting to tear around the edges. Holding the knife I make some cuts to help release it and the pages burst open – except they are not pages now, they are crisp $100 bills, lying flat across the notebook in a pile that is steadily increasing in height.

I watch, curiosity governing my actions, counting the bills as they appear and waiting for the activity to stop. Two hundred in total is the final tally, $20,000. The pages go still, fluttering only in the slight breeze. “Money’s only worth what you do with it,” my mother’s voice rings again in my head. Clutching the notebook closed in one hand, and the notes in the other, I run towards the cottage, calling to my partner. It might not be millions, but it's enough for an adventure, I think, as I run, it's enough to do something different. And I realise, as I run, that I’ve been found all over again.