SERENDIPITY:LOST AND (SOMETIMES) FOUND

(more inspired by my Writing Partner's poem on loss)

                

I thought I had stuck it in my eye yesterday morning –

the one contact lens I prefer to wear when the other eye is acting up. Yet for most of the day I walked around in a fog, not seeing very well. But I attributed it to that contact lens being off center.

At the end the day, however, when I tried to take it out, there was no there there. Where had it gone? Is it possible that with my near-sighted, astigmatic, and far-sighted non-vision, I had walked around all day blind as a bat without even noticing? Hard to believe, but that's the only explanation I can fathom.

This realization came after I read my Writing Partner's poem about loss.

While getting dressed for today's lunch, my hand reached for the Russian Fabergé egg necklace that I thought I had lost. It went missing for an entire year, but then reappeared in the bowels of my bedroom drawer here at Bell'occhio--a happy surprise. Although I had mourned it, I had never really felt it was mine.

It originally came from Russia, the land of my ancestors, but I did not get it there. According to my sister, it had been abandoned, along with other unwanted gifts, outside the New York apartment of violinist Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg in the building where my sister also lived. She must have felt sorry for it and decided it needed a new home.

I found that necklace amidst other neglected jewelry in my mother's bedroom drawer, still in its original black pouch with a handwritten label signed by the name of the Russian artisan who had made it.

So this little necklace, destined for a famous musician, has been on quite a journey: from St. Petersburg to Manhattan to Umbria.

I imagine it singing "I once was lost, but now I'm found."

PS:I notice that I have a number of readers in Russia. If one of you is the artist who made this, I hope you won't feel bad that it did not end up in the hands of its intended recipient. Given its French fleur de lys, I feel as if it were somewhat destined for me. In any case, it has found a good home.

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