The Case of the Disappearing Glasses

You know what I like? Matching drinking glasses. Maybe it’s because I grew up drinking out of jars that used to hold cheese, and later graduated to drinking from peanut butter jars when I was in college, but I really like looking inside my cupboard and seeing actual drinking glasses that look like one another. I like arranging them in neat rows. In this one, small corner of my otherwise messy life, there is order.

A few years ago, I bought just such a set of matching glasses. Since then, a few rebels have slowly joined the tribe—mostly ugly, plastic souvenir tumblers from Disneyland. No peanut butter jars yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, given the way family life works.

Lately, a few of my nice, matching glasses have disappeared.

I’d broken one of them with over-vigorous washing, and I regretted the error. Truly, I did. But when a pair vanished at the same time, I started to get suspicious. Glasses just don’t up and run away. They’re not romantic things, like dishes and spoons.

I grieved my matching glasses and thought about buying some more, but with our plastic tumblers and souvenir pint glasses there, did we really need to spend that money? No, we didn’t. So I quietly mourned my matching glasses and the collapse of order in my cupboard.

There is a secret to finding lost things, though. And that is to look for something else, specifically, a child’s shoe. Who knows what lost things in the world would turn up if everyone stopped to look for a shoe?

This is what I was doing yesterday in those awful minutes of the morning—the ones when you’re trying to get everyone fed, brushed, dressed and out the door to school. It’s always a frenzy of stress and sudden remembering of forgotten show-and-tell items, and it’s worse if someone can’t find a shoe. Lucy couldn’t find her regular school sneakers, so she was clomping around in a pair of hideous, muddy boots that were really, really, really not what to wear to second grade.

“Your red sneakers are between the couch and the window,” I told her. “Just like I told you yesterday.”

She marched over to the couch and plucked out one from beneath the radiator, holding it like it was perhaps radioactive.

“I can’t FIND the other one,” she said, after about two seconds of looking. 

“Aw, c’mon! They’re both there! I saw them! Shoes don’t just up and run away!”

“I CAN’T FIND MY OTHER SHOE,” she said.

I finished stuffing Alice into her raincoat and joined Lucy at the couch. I believe steam was coming out of my ears.

“If I find this shoe that you couldn’t find, so help me…” I said.

There wasn’t a good way to end that sentence, I realized as it was coming out my mouth. If I find this shoe that you couldn’t find we’ll…put it on your foot and go to school?

And of course I found the shoe in about two seconds. I found the shoe, two DVDs, three books, one notepad half filled with Lucy’s fashion designs, some crunchy bits of things that used to be cheddar bunnies, several granola bar wrappers and…my missing drinking glasses.

I also found a spoon, but no dish, so apparently things didn’t turn out all that well for them. Let’s see if the little dog laughs now.

The good news is, the glasses are clean and back in the cupboard, along with the mismatching interlopers.

When you have a family, you can crave order and matching things, and you can do your best to achieve that. But with kids, life is really more about plastic souvenir tumblers, mysteriously disappearing glasses, and magical reappearances just in time to get everyone to school—I can live with that.

--Martha Brockenbrough

Comments

[janet carey]

So You're the one that has my missing drinking glasses!!
I'm back to jars for now.

[Janis Raymer]

I have been there many times with my 13 year old. The 2 second look. "What about picking up something and looking under it" I tell her. "I did but I can not find it", she replies with. I go into her room find what she is looking for and sometimes I even find Jimmy Hoffa in her room...Sorry about that. That was a sick joke. It is strange that you find things where they really should not be and at the stranges times.