And There Is A Hand, My Trusty Friend

 

I own 3 sets of pillowcases.

All 3 sets were bought at “Dollarama”.

The last time I checked, I don’t believe “Dollarama’s”  inventory of pillowcases are made of the finest Egyptian cotton.

I lost one pillowcase today.

Not one set.

Just one pillowcase.

I believe I lost it on the way to the laundry room or on the way back to my apartment or maybe when I transferred my laundry from the washer to the dryer.

I have been known in absent minded moments to misplace a pillowcase under a sheet  when changing my linens. So I picked up my mattress and box spring and just like a customs officer looking for contraband I performed an entire strip and search……I looked everywhere you can look…..if my mattress  had an as*#@le, I swear I would have also looked up there.

Now one would think with all the moving and the searching and the stripping, I would have broken a sweat but I didn’t.

It is getting cold up here in Canada.

The kind of thermal socks and plaid flannel shirt wearing in your apartment cold….. that kind of cold you only feel deep in December, when winter isn’t teasing any longer, it has come to stay.

Since it is so cold I decided to cut my losses on the pillowcase and thought it might be a good time to tidy up the “ROBYN” collection of scarves and hats and gloves. Last month, I bought a pair of that “flashy really in style Hermes orange” color of gloves, once again from “Dollarama” and as I picked them up to put them in their spot, I thought of the Christmas, Santa brought me a matching scarf, beret and mittens in psychedelic green.

You can’t miss a girl in psychedelic green and you could see me coming from a mile away.

One day that winter my mother gave me a mini grocery list with about 5 items on it and a twenty dollar bill. I tucked the paper with the list on it and the twenty dollar bill into one of my groovy green mittens.

It was about the third winter we had lived in this small town and I hated having moved from a major city to a tiny little town where I didn’t fit in. The only way I could survive living there was by living in my imagination. And in my imagination that winter Davy Jones of “The Monkees” had fallen madly in love with me and had just taken me as his bride.

It is hard to live in your imagination and reality at the same time and after I bought the bread and the milk and a few other sundries, I daydreamed my way back home thinking about what being Mrs. Davy Jones would be like for me.

When I walked through our apartment door, I immediately gave my mother the paper bag of groceries and took off my mitten to give her the change from the twenty dollar bill.

I had pennies and some silver and maybe a two dollar bill but there didn’t seem to be a ten dollar bill anywhere, not in the bag, not in the other mitten, not in my pockets……not anywhere.

My father had been laid-off from his job.And that was the last twenty dollar bill my mother had.

Trust me, I was a responsible and a perfect little girl and I was certainly aware of the gravitas of my mistake.

But on the other hand being Mrs. Davy Jones……. I thought maybe I could convince my mother money did grow on trees.

So I said to my mother: “It was only 20 dollars, it isn’t the end of the world: Mother.”

With that comment my mother hit the roof.

And it was there on that very cold day in January in a town where I didn’t belong sobbing until I could barely breathe that I truly began to learn about loss.

Loss is in accordance to the situation at hand and the person who suffers from the loss.

Loss is big.

Loss is huge.

Very few things can be described as a small loss and what might appear to be small at first can turn out to be life altering in hindsight.

Whether it is the change from a twenty dollar bill, your pet hamster……your parents, a job, innocence, your lover or whatever……

Loss changes you.

It redefines you.

Your entire world can change in the instant.

And you are never the same again.

Ever.

I have been blessed this year.

It appears as though, I have lost only one red pillowcase from a dollar store.

Truly blessed, am I.

If you have suffered loss this year, my heart shares your sorrow.

And there is a hand, my trusty friend,
And give us a hand of yours,
And we will take a goodwill drink (of ale)
For times gone by!

And surely you will pay for your pint,
And surely I will pay for mine!
And we will take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!