Friday Writing Essential—A Pocketful of Surprises—October 30th, 2009

For everyone who has written me or wondered where I’ve been of late, I apologize for not being able to respond to notes or read and comment on your writing. I’ve been dealing with a series of family crises: my cousin’s unexpected death, her distraught husband’s collapse and hospitalization, my daughter’s prolonged case of swine flu, and a severe sinus infection. I’m hoping for a nice stretch of normalcy for a while so I can try to catch up on many things that got put on hold.

While my daughter was sick, besides washing my hands repeatedly to the point of pain, I must have washed thirty loads of laundry: sheets and pillowcases, pajamas and robes, towels and blankets. I was exhausted by the time she was feeling well enough to require less than constant attention, but I felt I needed to get something accomplished in the short lulls between meals, medicines, and laundry. I decided to clean out closets, a fairly mindless task I felt I could easily handle when there was a break in my nursing duties.

I decided to start with the coat closet just inside our entrance hall. Somehow this large closet never seems quite large enough to hold the numerous pairs of shoes, boots, gloves, and coats it contains; I swear they multiply at night when no one’s looking.

My husband likes to reject clothing for what I think are trivial reasons, yet they never seem to find their way to the Goodwill store or a clothing drive. I think he actually enjoys complaining that he has nothing to wear while standing in front of a bursting-at-the-seams rack of perfectly fine choices. So, I decided to put him out of his misery and enforce the rule he applies to everyone but himself: if it hasn’t been worn in a year, out it goes. My daughter had only one item in the closet that she didn’t wear, so that left only my items to review. I had the least of the three of us, and nothing that wasn’t used, so I decided to move on to checking pockets and determining what needed to go to the cleaners.

My husband never seems to have anything in his pockets, while my daughter’s coats almost always contain two items: tissues and lip gloss. When I got to my coats, I remembered one of them had a small inside pocket—so small that I could only fit two fingers into it. When I did, I felt a folded piece of paper. Money? Maybe I had put it in there for emergencies. I carefully removed it, and was pleasantly surprised to find something better than money: a pink paper note my daughter had written me many years earlier that simply said “I love you, Mommy” complete with drawing of a flower with a smiling face inside its petals.

I instantly remembered the day she had pressed this treasure into my hand as I was running out the door for work and now here it was again, on a day when I certainly could use a smile. I sat on the floor and thought of all the wonderful notes, cards, drawings, and gifts she had made for me over the years. I still had most of them—tucked away in various places so I could rediscover them from time to time.

I reached into the pocket again, to see if there was anything else inside. My fingers found a small smooth object, which I quickly removed. It was a red polished stone heart that I had bought when my daughter was very young. When she started school, she would sometimes worry about a test or an oral presentation, and I would tuck the heart into her pocket and tell her that it was a way to remember that I loved her and that everything would be okay. Sometimes she would pass the heart back to me when she knew I was having a difficult day. It was something only she and I knew about—a special secret we shared.

I took the heart into her room where she was resting and placed it on the table next to her bed. She smiled as she drifted off to sleep. In that moment, I remembered that we’re never too old and never too secure to appreciate reminders that we matter to someone else.

All in all, a day well spent.

For today’s prompt, write about a something forgotten or a surprise that you discovered in a pocket or a drawer. If you can’t think of anything, write a fictional account of your discovery of an item. Include a description of the item and its meaning, and describe how you felt when you found it.

Remember to tag your submissions with “FWE”. These pieces will be featured today.

As always, I look forward to your submissions.