Lost And Fond Of

The other day I found what I was looking for, while at the same time realizing that sometimes what is gone will never return. On that day, three weeks before his third birthday, my grandson, Micah, was at my house (or as he calls it – “Meme’s house”).

“I can’t find Billy,” Micah told us.

Billy is a little blue and white doll, actually more like a stuffed rattle in the shape of a baby. He had been missing for about a week.

Originally, Billy had belonged to our son, Nathan, when he was a baby. In the spring of 1988, my sister sent Billy as a gift for our new baby boy when we brought him home from the hospital, but for the past few years, Billy has belonged to Micah.

I know how toys can get lost. When I was little I had lost Diamond, my small stuffed panda bear. One morning I found him on the side of my bed cradled by the sheets and covers that were tucked in under the mattress; he had been there all along.

If Billy was in the house, we were going to find him. “I think he might be upstairs. We could go look,” Micah said.

I went up the stairs with him to look for Billy, as this was clearly within my skill set. When it comes to taking care of children, there is much I don’t do or at least don’t do well, but when it comes to looking for lost toys – I’m your guy.

“Billy might be in your bedroom Pa. He might be,” Micah said. “We could go and look. We could.”

I was reasonably certain the doll was not in our room, as my wife keeps a pretty tidy house, and Billy had not been seen there. Still, not wanting to dash his dreams or squelch his problem-solving skills, Micah and I walked down the hall to look.

We didn’t find him there, but we didn’t give up. Next, we looked in the bedroom that had once belonged to Nathan but has since been claimed by Micah as his own room.  As we looked all over the room I mistakenly referred to Micah as Nathan. I had slipped and fallen back in time. I was the same, as was the room and the toy, but the little boy was different. Micah and I looked in the bed and underneath it, but Billy was not there, so we went back downstairs, each feeling a little sad about the little boy who was not there.

“We couldn’t find him,” I said.  “Where do you think he is?” I asked Rhonda.

“Look in the toy boxes,” she said. “Billy might have been put in one of the boxes when we picked up the toys last week.“

“Let’s go look again,” I said to Micah.

So once again, he and I climbed the stairs with Micah leading the way and me close behind to guard against any missteps. We returned to Nathan’s/Micah’s bedroom, where we found two boxes of toys on the floor. We got on the floor and looked in the smaller one, but Billy was not there. I crawled across the floor to the second box and still did not see him; so I began to empty it, and soon I was handing Billy to Micah.

“BILLY, BILLY!” Micah said, as he pranced back and forth with Billy in his arms.

That night, back at his house, Micah told his mother, “I’m sure we glad we found Billy. He’s so happy to be with me again.”  

As I rattled around the quiet farmhouse that night, I found myself missing my own little boy and little girl.