The Book of the Lost and Found

Icy winds blow no more, the cold sharp breaths that chill my core.

Await the sun for when it comes, arrive the gifts of the spring kingdom.

I walk, watch, and finally see, the unfailing beauty of my painted lady.

She yawns, she stretches, she grows, and she knows,

That winter is yesterday, tomorrow, summer’s show.

Today, in the now, is why I am here.

Nature’s green, white, and pink canvas brought to bear.

All her glory is Mother Nature’s show, my trillium, my love, has a vernal glow.

Here I sit, charmed into inaction by the whirlwind antics of our crazy little wildflower. It’s unusual for her to be so energetic these days and so I sit and watch, spellbound by her beauty.

Her sandy blond hair is like uncut autumn wheat, and her eyes are green and mischievous like the cat eyes of Mr. Timothy, our newfound stray.

Our Trillium is spellbinding to watch, my dear. Her ever-curious hands reach out and curl their tiny little fingers around everything they can get ahold of, especially my pictures of you. Her slight elven form dances in the light of the setting sun as I sit here in our favorite chair lamenting your leaving.

Trillium is six years old now and she's barely uttered a word since you’ve been gone. I don’t yet know how to get through to her or what exactly haunts her memories the most.

As for me, I am haunted too. I sense you all around me but cannot find you. Your scent on unwashed clothes still lingers and entices me, and yet I know we will never embrace again.

Where have you gone to? A place that I cannot follow or find for sure.

Trillium, our wildflower, has begun to wilt in the darkness of your absence and refuses to bloom, while I, the loving yet heartbroken mother, must go on without you and figure out a way for both of us to move on in life.

Why did you have to die dear Damon? You promised you’d love and cherish me forever and yet you are no more. I promised I’d do the same, and here I am, eternally loving you, yet my love shall be unrequited for all eternity.

My daily sob session was just beginning, when suddenly, that scraggly little jerk of a cat came tearing out of the kitchen, jumped up on my lap, and with claws out, tore my skin and jumped to the chair beside me.

“You little shhhishkabob!” I hated to swear in front of Trillium, but that cat really pushed me to my limits. What was I thinking bringing him into our already broken home? I guess that’s the answer. We’re a home for the lost and broken and that is exactly what Mr. Timothy is.

One day, a little over a month ago, while drowning in the doldrums of my depression, I heard a cat cry out for his life. Our senior cat, Tinkleberry, was sunning himself outside on the back porch and I thought it was him. I’d never heard a cat screech like that, and so I ran to the door in terror. Was Tinkleberry being attacked? Was he dying out there?

After wildly swinging the screen door open, my bulging eyes, excitedly looking for a wounded animal, found Mr. Timothy. He’d made the fatal mistake of walking into Tinkleberry’s territory without permission.

Good old Tinkler had pounced on Mr. Timothy and was about to rip his throat out. I stopped him, though. Should I have let them battle to the death? Certainly not. I feel sorry for ants after they march onto my counters and die stuck in three-day old honey, a remnant of the herbal tea I drank a few evenings ago.

Anyway, I should’ve done the smart thing and brought Timmy to the kitty pound, better known as animal control. Instead, I wound up listening to my crying daughter and brought Timmy into our home.

My life since Timmy arrived has been hell. Both cats urinate on every carpet they find in an effort to mark territory. Tinkleberry hunts Mr. Timothy in the night and when he finds him, Tinkydoodle gets mean. I often awake out of my nightmares to the sound of one cat growling and another crying out in fear and pain.

I’m at wits end. I live with two crazy cats and a daughter that’s unresponsive. The bills are piling up and family is nowhere to be found. I’ll have to return to work in another month and after that, my ability to spend time with Trillium will be limited.

How will I save us when prayers fall unanswered like wishes ungranted?

“Please, help me G-d,” I pleaded aloud. “Why did you take Damon away from me so soon?”

I’ve shed enough tears over the last ten months to water every wildflower in the world. It was time to sleep.

The next day I awoke as the morning sun shone through the corner of my shades, gently bringing me back to consciousness.

How had that happened? I hadn’t slept that well in…

Well, in a long, long time. Trillium hadn’t rustled me awake either. Very strange indeed.

As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed that Trillium was in the living room writing in the black book that she’d found at the tag sale a month ago. Back then we’d walked the neighborhood and beyond looking for “lost cat” posters on phone poles. We showed passing people a picture of that darn cat asking them if they knew who he belonged to.

No luck on that. However, we did find a sign that led us to the tag sale of a nice old lady. She lived two blocks over and I’d never met her before.

After browsing through worthless junk and deciding it was time to go, I noticed that Trillium held a black notebook in her hand. After asking her to bring it to me, I read the cover.

The Book of the Lost and Found is what was on the cover. I flipped through a few pages and it looked to be an empty notebook of little value.

“Oh, she found it then?” The little old lady had snuck up to us and started to speak.

“Um, yeah, I guess so.” Small talk is better than no talk, I figured.

“Strange that it should go to a little girl like her. I’d envisioned it going to another.”

“Why don’t you put that back,” I told Trillium.

As her little hand went to place it back on the table, the nice lady quickly put her hand in the way, blocking my daughter from completing the task.

“No, dear lady. If the book found her, then she is the one to have it. Oh, there’ll be no charge either. Have a good day.” And with that she turned, walked away, and started talking to another shopper.

There was nothing left to say. We left with the book in Trillium’s hands. Her doctor had asked Trillium to start writing words and pictures in hopes it would inspire her to speak again. I knew it couldn’t hurt, and so the notebook was hers to do with as she pleased.

Since Trillium took ownership of the black book, I hadn’t even checked to see if she’d written anything in it. This particular morning, I decided to have a look. After gently coaxing it from her, she handed it to me on a very specific page and that is where I found the strangest thing.

There was handwriting on the page. It matched that of my daughter’s, but with one key difference. Many of the words I read were not her words. Clearly, it was written in her favorite color, Pink Stink. She’d held onto that crayon forever even though it was down to the nub.

Once again, it was the words themselves. It was as if they’d come from someone else’s mind.

It read like this…

“Twenty paces from cat’s favorite perch, toward an elder oak that hangs near the birch, then twenty more paces to the east toward the church.”

I stood dumbfounded by what had just happened. As I was reading the words in my head, Trillium was reading them out loud while looking me straight in the eye! What wonder was this? She wasn’t even looking at the page.

I stopped reading, looked at her and said, “Trill, do you know these words?”

Silence. I knew what needed to happen next. I continued to read, and Trillium read out loud with me!

“Twenty paces from cat’s favorite perch, toward an elder oak that hangs near the birch. Head twenty paces to the east toward the church, then start to go north where the sparrow gave birth. Don’t start to look till you’ve walked twenty more, in the place in the ground where the wall broke before. Near the stream by black rock, it is there you must seek, a gift from beyond to beloved Monique.”

Tears swept down my face and cleansed my skin. My daughter had just spoken more than she had since my husband died. More shocking than that, my name is Monique.

“I don’t understand Trill. Who told you to write this?”

“Dad. He whispered in my ear last night and when I woke up, his words were in the book.”

“What’s happening? I don’t understand. What is cat’s perch even?”

Trillium looked directly into my eyes with a love I’d thought was lost. She pointed to the chair where Tinkleberry was sitting. Then, it began to make sense.

Tinkleberry’s perch on the porch. That’s what it meant. I looked back at Trill and she had a garden shovel in her hand.

“Let’s go find it,” she said in such a happy voice.

That’s exactly what we did.

We started at Tinkleberry’s perch and headed toward Trill’s favorite tree to swing on. It’s a large old oak that’s growing near a birch tree. It was exactly twenty paces. Then we turned toward the church steeple that we could barely see above the treetops in the distance. We walked another twenty paces toward that.

At that point, I needed a break. How could any of this be real? I couldn’t think of the next clue’s meaning, but then Trillium giggled and pointed to a maple not more than fifteen paces away.

“Remember mommy? That’s where the mommy sparrow had her babies.”

My G-d, she’s right. Two years prior, on a windy day, my husband and Trillium found a baby bird that had fallen from its nest under that tree.

We moved with great purpose. I knew with certainty where we were headed from that moment forward. I remembered the broken wall. Damon was going to fix it. I knew the stream, as well. Trillium often flipped rocks in the springtime looking for crawdads and salamanders with her father.

As we stood by the stream, gazing at the shiny black rock referenced in the book, Trillium and I looked at each other once more, and then my daughter gave me the largest hug that had ever been given.

“I love you mommy.”

“I love you too honey. Let’s dig.”

Life is hard and sometimes painful. Nobody can say how it will end. What I do know is on that day two treasures were found.

In the ground where we dug, we uncovered twenty thousand dollars in rare coins that paid the bills and bought a car.

The second treasure was greater than the first. Trillium had found her voice. She’d come back to me, and that is a gift greater than any other.

Sometimes, things and people get lost, and other times, they’re found.