Lost property

How many times can a person lose their wallet or be pick-pocketed? I am beginning to wonder.

I've lost my wallet at Disney World, at the grocery store, once coming back from having keys cut, house.  I've left my wallet in loos, on trains, in apartments of inappropriate men. Sometimes, I just cut my losses. I just replace the things inside. Other times, they have been returned to me: small gifts, a slight miracle. 

Odd isn't it, that I never seem to lose anyone else's stuff, just my own, as though my value system is slightly skewed to favour 'the other guy.' 

How would I not notice my wallet going missing? I don't even remember what I was doing, sitting in the bus, waiting for my stop...was I reading? I had a book in my bag. Was I listening to music, off on my own mental jaunt? Staring out the window, staring into reflections? 

The last Thanksgiving I was in the US, Mommy, Helena and I drove south in one of the RVs they were going to deliver...I think in Ponchatula. It's funny, the things we don't remember. I had just sold the house in New Orleans, we had 3 weeks before we were moving back to the UK, back home. Jay was in Detroit. Lo and Mary were safe and snug in Dayton.  

We drove south, stopping in Kentucky, staying overnight in Tennessee. We stopped for gas in Alabama and I got our of the RV to use the loo. I don't know why, but I took my handbag with me. A good thing, too, because Peggy drove off without me. And this time, being left behind, accidently or on purpose, I am never sure....I didn't panic.  

I had my cell phone, I had my wallet, I had cash. I would be fine. I could rent a car, track them down or not. I could have very easily just walked into the horizon, not looked back. I could very easily have changed my name, changed my hair, become a spectacularly clumsy and inept international art thief. You can envision, can't you? See where the edges start to blur?

It's funny, when I noticed my wallet had disappeared last night I was in Tesco, buying fruit and a cinnamon roll to eat before I went back to Glasslyn Road. And I knew instantly that I had it close to hand getting on the bus, moving down the aisle to my seat. But then what? Surely, I would have heard it hit the ground if I had dropped it? 

I scurried around the small market, checking the circuit I had made. When you mislay things as often as I do, you get very good at scene reconstruction. The security guard was so kind, he could I was struggling not to panic. As I rounded a display case, I saw the bus drive off and started to run after it. But running is not something that comes easily to me. Then I booked an Uber, thinking I could race up the hill. But Crouch End is the start of suburbs, the edge of zone 2 and London is not always a 24 hour city. And the Uber was taking ages to arrive. By the time it would appear, the bus would he on its return. So I waited. I waited for 5 buses, asking every driver.  

The last time I lost my wallet just before a US trip, my friend R had come to stay. I was frayed, post-natal depression setting in, the stitches from the episiotomy were not healing quietly. She was worried. I was worried. The realms of the worlds colliding.

 I had a shopping trolley and I was laden with groceries. I had gone to have keys made. Gone out to tie up loose ends. I was in a panic about leaving, overpacking. Unpacking. Repacking. 

 

The wallet was more of a small clutch with a wrist strap: a burnt orange that made me smile. My son was still little, small enough that when we left the next day for our flight, I carried him on my chest. I carried both of the kiddos as babies, terrified I might accidentally leave them behind, the way I shed wallets and notebooks, as though they are snakeskin and I am moving beyond the frame of my body, as though I am trying to keep up with my soul. 

They called it 'theft by finding,' the disappearance of my wallet. It happened in the space of 2 minutes, between my leaving the key-cutting stand, fiddling with the trolley, packed too full, and turning the corner to walk down the hill, back to my pink house on the corner.

I lost my wallet on my way to work in 2019. We were moving collections and I was in another world, juggling the space and where everything would go. I knew it was happening but everything moved too fast. Someone handed that wallet in. Maybe the same will happen again. Not in time for what I need to do, though. The driving that needs to be done, etc. The crying I've still to do. 

 I want to sit somewhere and stare out at the water until everything makes some sense again. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, trying to manage all of my dad's bits and pieces...it's too much on top of keeping my own life and the lives of the children straight. I don't want to resent him but I didn't ask for this responsibility, to make these decisions so far above my pay grade, I panick everytime one flickers across my eyelids. 

This wallet? It was sturdy. Black snakeskin, two sided with strong zipper. It belonged to my friend N. She died unexpectedly in  January 2018. I liked it, liked the weight of it, the smooth responsibility of it. But it was cumbersome. I was carrying too much. That's the lesson, there, I suppose. You can't carrying your world with you all of the time and expect to keep it safe. You have to trust that you can set things down and they'll be there when you get back, that you'll be there when you get back.