Lost and Found

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Without further ado, today’s pocket.

I’ve been losing things lately. Glasses, keys, headphones, shoes… not really losing them, just misplacing them long enough to make my life more difficult than it needs to be. Glasses are so easy to misplace. I set them down somewhere, in a logical place, and then later I look in all the other logical places except the one logical place where I set them down. Headphones need to go back into the same place each time, and then I’m gold, but these days I leave them in my pockets, on side tables, in bike baskets. My work key ring broke, and all my keys fell off, and then I fixed my key ring, but I didn’t actually fix the problem, so all the keys fell off again. Shoes, forget it, that one’s not even my fault. Our puppy, Kam, steals shoes and carries them all over the house. I’ve started hiding my shoes from Kam, hanging them up high or tucking them deep in closets. This keeps my shoes safe from Kam’s insatiable appetite, but it also means, I can never find my shoes when I need them. It’s hard to get out the door in the morning without my glasses, keys, headphones and shoes. It’s extra hard because Kam seems to sense my weakness and uses this opportunity to start chewing my sweater and jumping on my back.

When I start losing things, it’s usually a sign that I’m doing too much. Last week, I wrote about not making things harder than necessary. This week, I was reminded that the main reason for that philosophy is that sometimes, life makes things plenty hard on its own, so if we can find ways to simplify and offer some ease, we should. Case in point, a week ago Friday, we learned that Matteo*, our foster son who lived with us for almost two years when he was five years old, was back in state custody. The following Monday, we picked him up from his emergency placement and brought him home with us. When Matteo left our house over two years ago to live with his birth dad and siblings, he was six years old. Now he is nine. Things are appropriately upside down.

Even though Dan started a new job last month after working for the government his entire career, and even though I’m wrapping up the school year which any teacher can tell you is insane, and even though Anna is about to graduate high school and head to college, and nine members of our family are coming to visit and live in our house with us for a week to celebrate her graduation, and even though we just got a new puppy, okay that one happened at the end of February, but seriously, when do puppies stop stealing shoes? Even though it might not be the best possible time to welcome someone into our home, Dan and I knew exactly what we would do, when we learned that our foster son needed care again. “It’s a no brainer,” Dan said, and on that I couldn’t agree more, and when we asked the kids how they felt about the situation and what they thought we should do, they also responded immediately.

“Yes,” Anna said. “I would love to see Matteo again.”

“When is he coming?” Seabass asked. “Can he come today?”

A child who we love and shared our home with, who we knew as a son and a brother, needed a home and a safe place to stay while things get sorted out, and even though we know that things might never get sorted out in a way that makes sense to us, and even though we knew we were signing up for a crazy, broken ride, and that worst of all, this ride would most definitely break our hearts wide open again, all four of us were the first to get in line.

When we picked Matteo up, we worried that he might not remember us. It had been over two years. He was so young before. I caught a glimpse of him in the doorway of the care facility. He looked so different. When he was five, he sported a mohawk and wore light up shoes. Now, he was taller and bigger. A red hood was covering a beautiful head of hair that had been dyed red. He looked at me with those same big brown eyes, and I knew he knew exactly who I was.

Dan and I introduced ourselves and asked Matteo if he remembered who we were, and he nodded his head. He didn’t remember our names, but over the next few days, we learned he remembered pretty much everything else…the trampoline, the transformers he played with, the kiwi crates he and Dan built, the raspberries I grew in the garden, the pesto we make as a family. “Can we have pesto for dinner?” He remembered how to grate cheese, and like every other child I’ve ever made pesto with, he complained about how long it takes to destem the basil.

On his first day with us, while playing a game with Seabass, I asked if the boys would like a little more time to play before dinner. “Yes,” both boys replied. “Love you mom,” Matteo said.

It is healing for me to see how much Matteo remembers, to know that each night he has stayed here he has slept soundly, that last night after I read to him and tucked him in, he came and found me and asked if I could read a little more, so he wouldn’t think about the scary things, and when I finished reading, he asked if I could stay, and he pressed my hand over his heart and closed his eyes.

“When we go to the lake,” he asked, as he started to fall asleep, “can I not sleep downstairs?” We haven’t been back to the lake yet, but Mateo is excited to go. He remembers his green kayak and the swim beach, and I guess he also remembers that his bedroom was downstairs while ours was upstairs, which is too far right now.

“Of course,” I said. “You can sleep upstairs.”

It is healing to have him here.

It is healing and heartbreaking in the same sentence.

And figuring out how to get him to school in the morning, when there is no school bus from our house to his school which is in his old neighborhood, is a monumental task, and when I finally figure it out, I still can’t find my glasses, my keys, my headphones or my shoes, and as I search for them, my dog tries to eat me alive.

* I am not using Matteo’s real name to protect his privacy.