Some Things I Found

Recently a flash drive containing, “like three hours of work,” on a science fair project was lost in the Crandler house. We tore the house apart looking for it to no avail, but during the search, I did find the following in the depths of our sofa: 4 hair ties, a pink plastic bracelet, a fake quarter, an actual dime, binder clip, bouncy ball, pair of scissors, broken purple crayon, big gold plastic Mr. T-style neck chain, brown marker, 5 pencils, small Ziploc of googly eyes, a pair of purple Barbie pants, three Nerf darts, an old cell phone, Bridal Barbie’s wedding bouquet, a Bluetooth earset and a fake centipede. I was so proud of my haul from the sofa that I lined it all up on the coffee table and sought out someone to whom I could show it. Dylan happened by first and marvelled at my haul.  “Dude! You found all of this? Whoa.” Then Ben walked in.  He surveyed the scene, shrugged his shoulders, said, “I’ve been looking for that Mr. T chain,” with complete nonchalance, scooped it up off the table, put it on and walked out of the room without even looking at me. (Suppressing my giggle required  considerable effort.)


You can find a lot of things in the Crandler house (maybe not a flash drive with your science fair project on it, but lots of other stuff). Sometimes you might even find a strawberry stuck to the bottom of your foot when walking through the dining room. If a kid finds that strawberry first (as was the case this weekend), you can bet it will be kicked off that kid’s foot (after a loud, “Eeewww!”) to be found in the exact same way by another kid (with another, “Eewww!”)… and another after that. Why deprive others of the thrill of discovery? (That’s what Maggie’s dad said when I mentioned this phenomenon on Facebook.  Easy for him to say - he's not cleaning our dining room floor.) Sure, I could have picked it up myself, but each kid finding that strawberry stuck to the bottom of their foot kept me giggling for the better part of the morning. And what could be better than that?

After this weekend of seemingly endless discovery, I arrived at work Monday morning and dug around in my purse hoping to find a bank receipt from a deposit I had made on Thursday afternoon. I never found the bank receipt, but I did find a half-eaten, three-day-old donut wrapped in a paper napkin. I’m not sure which I found more amusing - the ridiculousness of that donut being there in the first place, or the fact that I was not particularly surprised to find a three-day-old, half-eaten donut in my purse. But either way, finding that donut made me smile that day and sometimes that’s the best you can hope for.

I sometimes run across a Dove Chocolate Promises wrapper that advises me to look for love in unexpected places. Lucy and I routinely mock the advice dispensed on that particular candy wrapper by thinking of the most outlandish places we can look for love. Under the bed? Glove compartment of the car? And while looking for love in those places may be absurd (and therefore hilarious), I routinely find my joy in the most peculiar places.

Like most parents, the place I most often find my joy these days is with my kids, but not just in the, “I love yous,” hugs and hand-made Mother’s Day cards. I find it there, to be sure, but I also find it in places far more unconventional - in the silly, strange, weird and wonderful, sometimes chaotic, often ridiculous details of our lives together. Just look where I found my joy last weekend: deep in the cushions of our sofa, stuck to the dining room floor and wrapped in a paper napkin in the bottom of my purse.

Maybe under the bed and in the glove compartment of the car are perfectly reasonable places to look for love after all.