Lost And Found

Through an unforeseen, inevitable series of events, J finds herself living in her parents' home once more. She is 35 years-old. This feels both backwards and strange. There is shame, discomfort. Regardless, she is here. She has come home.

There isn't really space for J in the old family home, so she offers to tackle the job of cleaning out her dad's old den, which hasn't been used -- let's be honest -- for more than storing recycling and seasonal decorations since J was a teenager. You do the math.

To restore the den to its former dignity is a formidable task and J does not undertake it lightly. She is inspired by The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which she has recently finished reading. Following the specific steps and recommendations of the author, organizational-sensei Marie Kondo, J enters the room and formally kneels in the only patch of floor space she can see. She closes her eyes and addresses the room in her mind. She thanks the space for having served her family for so many years and asks permission to tidy it so that it might have a new life. Then she begins. 

Project den: Day 1

According to the KonMari method, it's best to tidy by category. J begins with the most obvious item: books. J's father is an avid reader, an erstwhile encyclopedia salesman, and a reclusive bookworm. It doesn't take J long to fill 22 bags and boxes to their breaking point with paperbacks and hardcovers.

She quickly moves onto the next category: papers. And this is when she finds an envelope addressed to her former self.

The envelope contains a piece of lined looseleaf paper with the date pencilled in the corner: Sept. 30/79. What follows is the story of J's birth, written in her dad's surprisingly legible hand. Maybe this isn't such a miraculous find. J knows the story, right down to the dirty-brown details of the meconium cocktail in which she first bathed. What is miraculous, though -- or at the very least magically coincidental -- is that J's father wrote this story for her, addressed that envelope to her, and that J herself should be the one to find it. 

This is a life-changing magical find. J could easily have let the den and its contents rot for another 10 or 20 years, however many her dad has left on this earth. She may have found it while cleaning out his estate and sorting through his personal effects as part of some funereal preparation. But she didn't. She found it now, proof that the day she was born had some profound impact on this inscrutable man, her father. Proof that he loved her enough to record the story of her entry into this world. Proof that even at 35 she is the luckiest little girl. She can bask at least one day longer in the knowledge that her daddy loves her, always did, even if it got tricky to tell her so.