Chapter 8 #2
The first thing I pull out is a photo album.
It’s a brown vinyl one that resembles my own family albums from childhood.
Opening it reveals it indeed belonged to a family and holds everyday pictures of life on a farm somewhere.
Mom decorated a nice Christmas tree and was fond of those thick ribbons that flow all the way down from the top to the bottom, taking the place of garland.
Daughter and Son seemed to enjoy riding on the tractor with Dad, who wore a green John Deere hat and T-shirts with no sleeves.
He looks like a hardworking man. They drove a Ford Taurus and a Dodge pickup.
Daughter won the middle school science fair that year and Mom got a ribbon at the county fair for a quilt she made.
As I close the album, already I understand why Mabel didn’t want these things thrown away. It’s someone’s memories. And in this particular case, these kids are probably still very much living, and quite possibly the parents, too.
Then I find a note stuck between two pages, clinging to the plastic page coverings. It’s dated fifteen years ago and says:
Found this in our library drop box in Moville, Iowa. Seemed like something that wasn’t meant to be put there, but no one around here seems to know this family. Not sure what to do with it, so sending it to you.
It occurs to me that if I really went digging, and maybe broke out a magnifying glass, I might be able to find some clues about these people hidden within the pictures, maybe the name of the county in which Mom won her quilting ribbon, that sort of thing.
But right now I’m suddenly curious to see what other kinds of stuff random people have gone to the trouble of mailing to Lost and Found, Kentucky, so I set the album aside.
Next I pull out a padded manila envelope.
Inside is a silver pendant on a chain. The note with it tells me it was found on the street in Depot Bay, Oregon, which it refers to as “a seaside spot that draws a lot of tourists, so it could have come from anywhere.” Ugh.
Helpful but not helpful. I examine the engraved pendant.
On one side in very small script: To our beloved daughter, Jasmine.
On the other: We are so blessed that God made you ours.
My heart clenches a little at that. Maybe it doesn’t matter; maybe Jasmine was just a little girl and her parents replaced the necklace when it was lost. But maybe Jasmine treasured it; maybe her parents are no longer with her and it meant the world to have that gift reminding her of their love.
And sure, okay, maybe I’m injecting my own baggage here, having lost both my mom and dad before my twenty-first birthday.
But no matter how you slice it, I hate that this token of love for a daughter is .
.. here, in my hands, in Nowheresville, USA, and not wherever it belongs.
Taking a deep, sad breath, I return the pendant to the envelope with its note and set it atop the photo album with a heavy heart.
The next thing I pull from the box is a very small, worn leather envelope of sorts.
But then, no, I discover that when you open the envelope, it’s actually a tiny book with an interlocking cover.
It’s black, though much of the black has worn away over time, and I look inside to discover it is, in fact, a Bible.
I’m instantly fascinated, and even more so when I carefully investigate it to find it was published in 1834!
Just inside the front cover, the name Sarah J.
Hawkins is written in ink in the fancy script common in historical documents.
The pages are thin, delicate, so I carefully turn the first, which is blank, to find on the second a faded inscription: Died on the 18th of May, Charles Samuel Hawkins, son of Isham K.
Hawkins and Sarah, his wife. Aged 4 years and 2 months and 18 days.
My heart seizes. Was this a gift to Sarah from her husband on the death of their little boy?
Or did the couple simply choose to record their son’s death in Sarah’s pocket Bible?
Either way, the gesture reminds me that loss is loss, and that it hurt someone just as much to lose a child in 1834 as it does now.
I feel the heartbreak within the jagged handwriting.
This one comes with no note or anything else to tell me where it turned up or who sent it to the Lost and Found post office, but the act of holding the miniature Bible presses down on my heart in a way I can’t escape.
I set it on the floor next to me and cry a little.
Which is ridiculous. I mean, a woman who hardly ever cries breaks down over a little boy who died almost two hundred years ago?
Even Sarah and Isham are long gone, so many generations ago that their descendants wouldn’t know them beyond just a name in their family tree at best. Yet still this seems like a treasure—a heartrending slice of someone’s history—and certainly something that should never, ever go into the garbage.
And the truth is, here in Lost Valley, without all the usual connections of the modern world, time seems .
.. different, and for a brief moment it’s not all that difficult to feel myself within Sarah’s skin, suffering her pain, back in 1834.
As I wipe away tears, thinking what I really should have armed myself with was a box of tissues, now I know why I was so turned off by the idea of looking at this stuff. Maybe I’ve had enough loss of my own without having to carry other people’s, too.
I get up, grab my can of pop, exit the room, find a box of Kleenex in the living room, and blow my nose. It’s still raining.
As I stare out into the soggy gray day, Mabel’s yard looking especially green and lush in contrast, it hits me that .
.. without quite realizing it, I’m doing exactly what Mabel asked.
She didn’t ask me to find out where these things came from or to whom they belong—she asked me to care about them, to care about them as they were once cared for by the people who loved them.
Maybe not such a hard request after all.
Especially on a rainy day.
Even if it comes with a few tears.
Taking back up my soda and adding the tissue box, I return to the room I now officially think of as the lost and found. I could think of it as merely “the lost,” but no—just like Mabel, I’m finding them. One by one, they’re being found, at least by me.