Of Lost Treasures, Tangible and Intangible

A friend of mine lives in a 100-year-old house… not a mansion, just a cozy little nook of a home on a shady street. And, what with it being a 100-year-old house, it needs repairs now and then, and those repairs sometimes result in mysteries.

I think it was when she had the dishwasher replaced and water pipes were being refitted that the shoe showed up. It was a woman’s pump, maybe a size five or six, black, decades old. It had been a dress shoe, and it didn’t look very worn. We all wondered about the story behind it, how the shoe got lodged back in that corner, how long the woman had looked for it, where she’d worn it, who she was, and what she was like. Being the writer in the crowd, I had to remind everyone of Ernest Hemingway’s famed six-word short story: “For Sale: baby shoes. Never used.”

Another friend once told me a story about Robert E. Lee’s children intentionally or unintentionally dropping toys in the columns at their home, now part of Arlington National Cemetery. I mused about what might be found someday… a doll, perhaps, or a nutcracker or a ball.

That’s the thing about houses. Try as we might to get it all, we invariably leave some trace of ourselves behind when we leave. And generally, there’s no going back once new people have moved in.

But we leave behind more than shoes and dolls and trinkets and unmated earrings when we move. We leave traces of our time there, happy and sad. We leave joy that can’t be recaptured, pain that can’t be fixed with a do-over. Some of the memories are lost treasures we remember with a smile. Others are better relegated to the trash bin. Good or bad, they remain, mute testimonies to the places and people who informed who we are today.