My husband and I are empty nesters who live with a cat, Hana. She is wonderful. She doesn’t seem to have complicated emotions like guilt or jealousy. She seems to be always happy, purring with almost every breath. In a world that is becoming increasingly complex, we appreciate her simplicity and are sometimes in awe of her peaceful way of being.
On a Sunday in November, I visited a couple on my street to drop off our leftovers from the previous night, as we learned that they had been sick. I walked to their house in the late afternoon. The days are getting shorter, and it was already pitch black when I came out of their house. Under the streetlight I noticed that my right hand was without a ring.
Monday and Tuesday went by. I wondered about the ring’s whereabouts but was sure that it was in the house and that it would turn up eventually. But my optimism started to wane. On Wednesday morning, I took a break from my work and looked for the ring. I went to the places where I usually find it. Between the toaster and the stove in the kitchen. I take my ring off when I prepare chicken or fish. I looked under the toaster, between two containers that hold change and spatulas. No, not here. I went to the piano, where I take off my ring so that it won’t touch the black keys when I spread my hand over them. Not there, either. I then went to the bathroom, although I knew it wasn’t there. Lastly, my chest of drawers. I went there last, as I had looked on it, around it, and under it several times already. There was no change in my “no ring” situation in that space.
Now I had to retrace my footsteps. When I saw my piano teacher on Monday, was I wearing it? Did I take it off and put it in my bag? I searched in my regular bag and other bags that I was sure I hadn’t touched for weeks. I was aware that I was acting illogically. But hey, at least I organized the contents of my bags, I consoled myself.
On Thursday morning, I crawled around my bedroom with a flashlight and looked for it under the bed, behind the bookcase and under the chest of drawers (again). But no, there was no sign of it.
After work, I went to the nearby supermarket. I remembered that I went there on Monday evening after my piano lesson to buy fruit. When I took the customer card out of the side pocket of my bag, did the ring fall off? I asked at the customer service counter, “I know this sounds strange, but I may have lost my ring here on Monday. Do you have any gold rings?” A young guy made a funny face and said, “I don’t think so, but let’s take a look!” He opened a drawer and moved things around. “No. Sorry.” I said thank you and left.
Then he called “Miss! Miss!” I turned around and saw him holding something between his fingers. It was a big and very decorative ring. A Victorian ring, I labeled it in my head. An over-the-top kind of ring. How did she drop it? Why did no one claim or steal it? But I could have dropped mine if it had been in my bag. So, I was not qualified to say anything about unreasonable human behaviors. Unthinkable things could happen in the world, and I’m one of those people who excel at making unimaginable mistakes.
As I left the customer service counter moping, I noticed the hard floor and was convinced that I would’ve heard a noise if the ring hit that floor. That gave me another place to look at.
Every night, I put out socks for the next morning before I go to bed. I’m an early riser and don’t want to bother my husband with the noise of opening and closing my sock drawer. Maybe, just maybe, I forgot to put my socks out on Saturday night and I needed to take a pair out of the drawer on Sunday morning. And somehow one of them caught the ring that was on the chest of drawers and knocked it into the drawer? Was that the reason why I didn’t hear it fall?
This unlikely possibility gave me a speck of hope, and I didn’t want it to turn into dust. I felt the warmth coming from this tiny hope and wanted to fall asleep with it. I said to myself that I had done a lot for my ring that day and went to bed.
On Friday morning, I opened my sock drawer, moved my socks around and then lifted and shook them in the hope that my ring would fall off. But alas, it turned out to be a phantom ring that I concocted in my head.
At this point, I just wanted to be done with the search. I inspected every square inch of my bedroom again but couldn’t find the shiny object that I so desired to see. I ran out of options and told my husband that I didn’t think I’d be able to find it. It was lost, without any recollection of how I lost it.
I was sad. But I was hurt more by the way it went lost. I wanted to notice or remember the moment when it went poof!
I could lament that later with a glass of wine, I said to myself. Meanwhile, I instructed myself to be on a call. Leaving my bedroom, I noticed that some of my clean outfits were neatly folded and left on next to the TV. My husband learned how to fold clothes in high school and likes to take care of that final part of our laundry process. After the call, I returned to my bedroom and carefully put those folded clothes in the drawers under the TV. There. At least the room looked nicer. But my heart was heavy. It was the ring that my husband gave me for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
I sighed slowly and quietly. This is the end of my quest. I wanted to hold a little farewell ceremony so that I would not repeat the search like a criminal who would go back to the crime scene. I stood between the chest of drawers and my bed, and started one final inspection of the floor from the window to where I stood. Five inches away from my toes, there was this shiny object that looked exactly like my lost ring. For a few seconds, I thought I had gone mad. I told myself, “I must be hallucinating because I wanted to see it so much. This can’t be real.”
But it was! I touched it and it didn’t disappear. All at once, I understood the whole thing. I ran to the room where Hana, the cat, was asleep in the middle of the blanket that I shaped into a circle. I hugged her gently, whispered, “Thank you,” and heard her purr.
While I was looking for the ring, what I regretted most was that I had not taken pauses between activities during the preceding months. I moved from work to a coffee break to work to house chores to work. Everyday became a big blur that had no clear start or end. I was not aware of what I was doing. So, Hana gave me a precious lesson. Unintentionally, of course, but I still really appreciated her advice. She was my angel who carried an important message to me: pause and breathe before moving onto the next thing!
Later that day, I went back to my bedroom because it was now a happy place where the ring miraculously re-emerged. There was a depression in the bed where Hana must’ve been sleeping. The sun was already low, and its orange light was coming into the room. And then I saw the shiny object on top of the chest of drawers reflecting the sunlight. This must have happened last Sunday as well and peaked Hana’s curiosity. She found a way to get up onto my chest of drawers, although she had never done it before and I had ruled it out as a possibility early on. I should never underestimate you, Hana.
I went to the kitchen where she was now sitting in front of the glass door facing the back yard. I stood behind her and looked at some of the last few oak leaves falling, and a squirrel running, just like she was doing with calm and peace. And then I took a couple of deep breaths before I went back to my bedroom to put my ring in a safe place where sunlight couldn’t reach it.