Lost and Found

I was standing in front of the Barnes & Noble bestsellers’ bookshelf when I had my final holiday season psychiatric moment. I saw a book that I thought my father and brother-in-law would like to read. And then I thought to myself, what if they have already read it? Would they be insulted if I gave them the same gift? Where can I find a unique gift these days? Every city has the same shops, the same clothes, and the same books. What happened to my gift card only plan?

Do I need a straitjacket or what?

It was then that my meltdown moment morphed into an epiphany and I realized. “Oops, I forgot to leave the country.”

Let me explain. One of the best Christmases I can remember in my adult life took place a couple of years before I got married. Not that I don’t love being a mom/wife who celebrates both Hanukah and Christmas with different sides of the family (that would be 9 days of presents, thank you very much), but my mind often wanders back to 1998.

Sensing that it probably wouldn‘t be long before I was married, my parents took my sister and me on an adventure tour through Costa Rica for the holiday season. The plan was to meet up in the Miami airport and spend the night in a groovy hotel next to the ultra hip Delano.

Upon arrival, I grabbed my new purple duffel bag from baggage claim and hopped into the car. I was ready for a night out in Mambo Miami. In the hotel room, I went to unlock my bag and the key didn’t fit. I unzipped the side pocket and found a pair of men’s sneakers. “Who put their sneakers in my bag?” I thought. Until, Hello, I realized I had taken someone else’s bag. A duffle bag that looked identical to mine.

I called the airline but my bag was not at the airport. I tried not to panic. How was I going to reassemble my outdoor adventure wardrobe in 24 hours? What about my favorite pair of jeans? And super soft pajama pants? It’s only stuff, only stuff, I repeated to myself. Some new age-ism came back to me. Request. Release. Receive. So, I requested I get my bag back and released all importance about it. And then I did what any good woman does while attempting to transform panic into peacefulness: I pigged out on plantains and grilled chicken.

When I got back to the hotel room, I called the airline again. They had located my bag. A man on my flight had mistakenly taken it. And where was this man now? He was staying in the same hotel as me in the room right above me. True story, I swear.

I was stunned. My father, who is a mathematician, could not calculate the probability of my suitcase exchange, but we all knew it was quite low. If this had been a movie, my suitcase exchange mate would have become my long lost soul mate, but alas, we never met. I picked up my bag at the front desk the next morning, and headed down to Costa Rica. By that time, I was “released” from my stuff and truly ready for an adventure.

The trip continued to be magical, but in a different way. To be in a country where there were no Christmas songs broadcast 24/7 and large mobs fighting for a parking spot, the holidays felt fresh. I will never forget a small house we drove past that had a Christmas tree on the front porch. The tree had no presents or fancy ornaments from Bloomies, just primary colored lights aglow in the evening sky. On a foggy Christmas morning, my family and I exchanged small presents. I felt at peace and full of love for my family. There were no busy schedules, no trash to compact and no distractions from the spirit of Christmas.

But just as my duffel bag was in the right place at the right time, I know so am I. If I had left the country this year, my kids and I would not have been able to experience the Nutcracker Ballet, the gingerbread house-building sugar fest and the five hour plane ride that we are about to board.

I now own a set of luggage that looks like no other. But if it happens to get lost, I will know I’m being reminded that life is full of small and simple miracles.

The Fantastical Truths

We bought our house a year ago today. You ask yourself, “How do I know this important piece of information?” Could it be my scrapbook? My fabulous and articulate memory? Please. I know because our heater broke and I called our home warranty company. Our policy expired yesterday.

Oh yes, it was only 364 days ago when I entered into one of my Willy Wonka-esque fantasies about the way my life would someday be. My husband and I had argued for a solid year about whether we could buy a house in Laguna. I dreamt that it would come true. After seeing over twenty houses, I wasn’t exactly sure how, but I remained the eternal optimist. My husband, the skeptical pessimist, believed that we needed to rent until the market dipped. But when I saw our house, I knew right away this was the one. And I was right. In what I call a “miracle” and he a “right place at the right time,” we were able to close before it went on the market.

The people we bought it from hailed from the land down under and had fabulous taste. The house was decorated with cool art and modern furniture. They were a designer family like I had never seen. Even though they had two children, the house was sleekly tidy in a sort of “Hey, we’re hip parents whose kids play, but never make a mess” fashion. And speaking of fashion, the mom was always stylishly dressed in some size 0 designer frock.

I knew that after living in this house, I, too, would become a tidy parent who was contemporary, hip, and perhaps even thin. All my cravings for chocolate chip cookie dough and nachos would dissipate. Those are not contemporary foods. From now on, I would eat organic greens for lunch and sip espresso at my new concrete countertop. I would study the Abstract Expressionist Painter De Kooning and contemplate why he chose to paint women as landscapes. I was going to have a lot more time to myself because my children were going to play quietly in a postmodern fashion that didn’t involve toys, only ideas. No toys, no mess to clean up. Instead of arguing over real estate, my husband and I would discuss whether libertarianism is a viable political philosophy.

This would be our new Laguna life. And we would smile and laugh nostalgically about our old messy Spanish style house we left in Los Angeles. What a chaotic, muddled life we used to live.

Ha! If only change were that simple. As I sit here a year later, waiting for the heating repairman to arrive, I think about my Modern House Fantasy. My life looks pretty much the same as it did a year ago, but surprisingly parts of my fantasy did come true:

True. I do eat a lot of organic greens although I can still polish off a hefty plate of nachos. (It’s not really fair to measure my chocolate chip cookie dough intake since that reached record highs while I was breast-feeding my kids.)

True: I don’t think I am hipper or thinner than a year ago, but I did go down a bra size, so I think that counts. (I’ll take what I can get here!)

False. I do not study De Kooning and Abstract Expressionism. My reading ranges between the New York Times and US Weekly depending on the number of temper tantrums thrown that day.

False. My house has never been such a disaster zone of toys, princess costumes and glue sticks. I blinked in a weak moment and one of those wretched Bratz dolls appeared in my house. (I blame it all on Costco and the poor lighting.)

True. My husband and I no longer argue about whether to buy a house in Laguna, but we do continue to argue about whether prices will ever drop. I have more time to discuss art, but unfortunately I don’t have the brainpower. It is probably being used up by my new fantasy: I become an extreme sports athlete with a specialty in surfing. I spend my free time posing for Surfer Magazine, designing my own swimsuit line, and, of course, working out with Oprah.

I suppose there could be some truths present in this fantasy. But first, I need to learn how to swim.