As Joe and I packed our small carry-on bags in our hotel room in England in late April, I realized that my beloved owl necklace- the one piece of costume jewelry I’d brought with me- might get lost in the shuffle when security officials tore into our belongings. So I secured it safely inside a pair of thick socks. (Joe’s suitcase is always crammed with a bewilderment of cords, miscellaneous electrical gadgets, various connectors, tiny machines, miniature speakers, etc., which always gives airport security fits. They feel compelled to dismantle and search everything connected to us, every time. It’s an annoying, but inevitable part of flying.)
Later, back at Sunnybank, I wanted to wear my necklace, which isn’t valuable, just cherished.
It wasn’t anywhere.
My heart sank.
I hadn’t seen it since packing up in England. So, I methodically searched the dining room and library, where I’d unpacked two weeks before. I squeezed socks, and pawed through every bit of clothing. I examined the chair cushions. My pants pockets. The dining room sideboard. The windowsills. I even searched the lining of my small suitcase. Finally, days later, I’d given up. So had everyone else. We decided that when airport security had thoroughly searched our belongings, my owl necklace had somehow been lost.
I’d bought it in Peru decades ago, when I was a Youth For Understanding exchange student. This morning, as I sipped my coffee, I felt its absence once again.
Stop! This was stupid! I’d put the loss behind me, and moved on. What’s with the ‘retread’ mourning?
“OK, Mum,” I sighed, as I did the dishes; “where’s Owl? You find it.”
Hold on! My mother’s been dead for twelve years. Yet- she’d popped into my mind just then. Mum had liked owls, but -most especially- she loved any fish on a necklace. Fish were her thing. There’s a big wood-carved trout attached to the fireplace mantel in Bryn Garth Cottage. (My sister loves chickens. I like spiders and owls. Odd passions like this run in the family.)
Anyway, right then I felt drawn to the dining room. “I’ve searched here ten dozen times,” I muttered. “Owl’s gone.”
Now here’s the exceedingly strange thing. I found myself standing by the room’s sideboard, where my mother’s inch-high owl figurine sat, next to our antique coffee urn. (I’d brought the tiny memento home years ago, as a keepsake.)
Lying between them, with its chain laid out nicely, was my much larger owl necklace.
To describe me as astounded is to understate. I was a fish, open-mouthed, pop-eyed, deeply shocked. Everyone had searched this room. I’d passed the sideboard a dozen times daily, since. Only the tiny owl, and the urn, were ever there. Yet, here was my owl necklace between them now, impossible to miss.
Richard Feynman, the world’s greatest particle physicist, used to muse about inexplicables. Bosons- unimaginably tiny particles- always behave differently when they are observed, which, when one considers the rules by which we comprehend our world, and the infinite sky, should be impossible. He’d ruminate about parallel universes- multiverses- and say, ruefully, that “physicists understand very little – almost nothing, really- about why, or how our Earth and the universe work as they do.”
I know, I’m wandering here. Forget particle physics. My Owl is home. An impossible reality.
And I’m a permanently puzzled, really happy woman.