On a recent Sunday, my 11-year old and I spent most of the afternoon at a soccer-related event.

Afterward, I realized we’d have just enough time to catch the sunset, so we drove through town and found a parking place.

The first spot I found required parallel parking and normally, I am an adequate parallel parker.  I’m always kind of amazed that I can maneuver my van into a parallel parking spot but usually, I can do it without too much trouble.

Except this particular time.  I had the mini-van angled in but as I pivoted my head around and around (like the Exorcist, exactly as you picture), a man’s voice came clearly through the open window:  “Nope. Not gonna make it.”

I agreed and wheeled out of that spot in shame and circled around some more until I found a stretch on a block with plenty of space to pull into.  This space also had no critics standing nearby to mock me.

Anyway, I parked and we hurried out, down the street and toward the stairs leading to the beach.  I expected the sunset to be spectacular because a wildfire had been burning nearby.  Did you know that smoke in the atmosphere can turn the sunset more intensely red?  (Something about debris in the atmosphere scattering the green and blue light, leaving just the red showing.)

Just as we were to cross the street, my daughter noticed a wallet-type purse sitting on the street corner.  I bent to pick it up, revealing a smart phone with a cracked screen beneath the wallet.  The wallet contained the owner’s driver’s license and what appeared to be a credit card and some other kind of card.  The phone seemed to be ringing without making any sound but I hesitated to answer it.  I noticed the icon said she’d had four phone calls.

I put the phone and wallet into my purse and then we went down the stairs to the sunset.  My plan was to wait until the sunset and then to deliver the phone and wallet to a sheriff’s office near a movie theater where we’d be heading to pick up my son.

So, the sun set:

My son called, so we drove down the highway to the movie theater.

I parked and walked down the street to the sheriff’s office but it was closed.

I looked at the phone and saw twelve missed calls.  I imagined that the phone’s owner in panic, calling her own phone, hoping someone would answer, hoping she could find it somehow.  I’m acquainted with that type of panic.

I thought I’d get home and then figure out what to do. The address on her driver’s license was local.  When I lost my driver’s license at the beach a few months ago, someone picked it up and turned it into the police department.  I received a letter in the mail telling me they had my property and after I called, they mailed it to me.

I picked up my son and then started to drive away.  I glanced at the lost phone and saw it was ringing yet again.  I answered it.  Fourteen missed calls.

“Hello?”  Silence.  So I said, “Is this _______________?”  (I knew her name from her license.)

Then, “I found your phone!”

She shrieked with relief and joy.  I circled back around, waited for her for ten minutes or so and then happily delivered her wallet and phone to her.  I was so happy to be part of the miracle that young woman experienced.  What was lost was found.

Amazing grace all around.

 

Is it just me or are clouds of fruit flies swarming your kitchen, dancing around on your apples and bananas?  I have become an efficient fruit fly murderer.  I pour a little red wine vinegar into a glass ramekin and add a drop of liquid dish detergent and swish it around.  Then the fruit flies dive in and drown.

You’re welcome.  And you thought I wasn’t a superstar housewife!  Hey, don’t judge me by the dog-hair tumbleweeds.

In other news, I put on a light sweater, socks and shoes and jeans tonight because it seemed like fall weather outside.  And then I realized it was 69 degrees.  Sixty-nine degrees in Seattle means it’s warm enough to go to the waterpark.  It’s all perspective.

What else?  Well, mid-terms are next week.  That means we are nearly a quarter of the way through the school year.  This seems impossible, though I have made enough school lunches to last me until I settle into my room in the nursing home.  (I know, I know.  I could make my boy make his own lunch but I don’t want to.  I just want to complain about making them.)

September 21 marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of my dad’s death.  I was twenty-four when he died, so my life can now be divided neatly in half.  Twenty-four years with a dad; twenty-four years without.  I like symmetry but I do not like this.  He missed out on so much–and my kids missed out on having their grandfather.  It’s not fair, but as he always said, “Life isn’t fair.”

What’s odd is that men my own age remind me of my dad.  Weird, right?  But my dad was forty-seven when he died, so men about that age–about my age–look the same age he did when he died.  Forty-seven seemed like a reasonable life-span to me when I was twenty-four.  I mean, it still seemed too young, crazy and impossible and all that, but he seemed like he’d lived a lot of life.  And he had.

But now?  Now as a forty-eight year old woman, I see that forty-seven is just getting started.

At least I hope so.  I still have a lot of fruit flies to kill and school lunches to make and soccer games to cheer and books to read and sunsets to watch and stuff to do before I’m plucked from this earth.