Lost and Found!
October 19, 2011 § 5 Comments
For several years now, I’ve lived in fear of locking my car keys in my car. Or leaving them somewhere. Or letting them fall out of my pocket. I’m not sure if that’s a phobia, like arachnophobia (which I believe I do have!) but it probably should be. You see, Tom lost his own car key (the one with the key at one end and the “clicker” automatic door openers at the other) and we’ve been using my set ever since.
The VAN
I think I’ll make up a word here – clésperdantaphobia, i.e., a phobia of losing keys – that’s in French/Greek because the Greeks have no word for key (I think). How’s that? Honestly, when I’m getting out of my van, I do a thorough body search to make sure I have the car key in hand before I lock the doors!! (Fortunately, our van won’t allow us to lock the doors when the motor is running!)
Then there’s the lost folder – you know the type – clear plastic one holding the contract from the builder who is to extend our roof at the back of our house so that it covers the whole patio (birdcage) and then encloses the present lanai and part of the patio so that we will have a VERY LARGE Florida Room?
Let’s see, I think I’ll call this one … oh, who cares, I’m not the one who lost that one either!
However, I have lost some things … important things, too. Along the years, I’ve lost some friends, especially my high school friends. Our family only lived in Louisville, Kentucky, for five years – 1959-1964. I graduated Atherton High in 1962 and left for college the next fall. I never returned to Atherton, even for a visit. During the summers, I worked at Camp Crestridge for Girls or Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center, both in Black Mountain, NC.
Then, in 1964, Dad accepted the position of Chairman of the Religion Dept. at Baylor University and we moved back to Texas for good. I graduated from Baylor, taught in a couple of universities, got my Doctor of Music Arts degree in Church Music and Voice and headed to Brazil. After eight years teaching in the North Brazil Baptist Theological Seminary, I returned to the US and married. Tom and I lived in Kansas City, MO, for almost three years, then moved to New Jersey – 15 years there – and finally retired to Florida in 2003.
In other words, I never looked back! I’ve stayed in touch with more recently acquired friends over the years, but lost touch with others. Why do I do that?
I guess I do it – inadvertently – because I tend to look forward. I look at the future and see adventure and new experiences and rather quickly let go of the past.
This was brought home to me over the weekend when a lost friend from Atherton High School reached out and found me … through the internet and my web page. She wasn’t the one who called me, however. That was another high school friend who told me she’d been looking for me for years – every time the Class of ’62 geared up to reunion – and next year is our 50th.
Atherton HS, Louisville, KY
Will I go? I don’t know. We’ve already made plans to be in Fort Worth, TX for a convention that same weekend, and then the “every-other-year-visit-with-family-and-friends-in-Texas” tour. But we’ve been to two of Tom’s high school reunions and I think this is my turn! I looked at the contact list Susie sent me of our class and began recognizing names from my past. Choir buddies, Aerial (newspaper) colleagues, cheerleaders, jocks … I wonder if I’ll remember them when I see them, or if they will remember me? I’ve taken steps. This very morning I went to the Atherton website and registered as an Alum … now we shall see!
But what of others?
I occasionally talk to friends in New Jersey. We visit with folks at CBF Assemblies and Pearl Harbor Reunions (see past blogs for those activities!). And I’m in contact through Facebook with more and more friends from Brazil and college and church.
But the one friend I miss the most is Judye Mac, my best friend from Camp Crestridge and Carson-Newman College days. Judye died of uterine cancer several years ago, even as we planned for her to visit us in Florida. She never told me she was ill. I was mad at her for this … I didn’t want to go to her funeral, I wanted to visit with her even for one last tearful time. We would have talked of fun times and laughed … or not … but we could have said goodbye and that’s important.
When I left Brazil to marry, I lost another friend because she isn’t a good correspondent. Back in the days when letter writing was the ONLY way, besides overseas long distance, to keep in contact, she didn’t answer my letters and I stopped trying.
This morning I have resolved to try again – this time through the seminary website. Life is too short to lose important things, and friendships are the most important of all.
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C. S. Lewis
my other zone 
Loved clefperdantaphobia. May I use it? I promise to give credit!
Great post …
Be my guest!
MLS
BTW, I should have said clésperdantaphobia. Clef means musical keys, whereas clés means keys for cars or doors. (Don’t pronounce the final “s” in clés however!)
MLS
Friendship is worth finding, new or old!
We move so fast and so far we are bound to leave a trail behind us. It is great to reconnect with friends from the past but probably most important to be a friend in the moment.