Lost and Found

Finders Keepers: A lost suitcase, a mother, a sister, and the things we hold onto.

Traveling to New York with my mother this weekend was an assignment. My mom is the most vibrant, vital, and beautiful older person you would ever feel blessed to meet. She is temperamentally grateful and rarely stops talking. I’m often a careless daughter — distracted, a little self-centered.

But on this journey I was determined to be the archetypal good daughter.

Unusually early, we caught the train from Union Station and arrived seamlessly in New Jersey to visit my aunt and uncle.

We settle into our gathering and my mom asks me to fetch the presents from her suitcase. I unzip it and the first thing I see is a giant heavy winter coat. I had helped her pack everything the night before, so I knew she had just snuck it in there.

Mom, why did you bring that heavy coat?

That’s not my coat.

In fact, it also wasn’t her suitcase.

Twenty minutes later, the police arrive at my aunt’s building. They knew precisely where to find me. I didn’t look arrestable and they left with only the suitcase. The person whose luggage it was is apparently smart — smart enough to have an AirTag.

We didn’t even have a name tag to identify my mom’s suitcase. When asked what it looked like, I kept repeating: it’s blue.

Anyone who has ever tried to call Amtrak knows there is no link to the living other than a bot named Julie. Julie is unspeakably unhelpful. I spent three hours looking for a human and found one who could trace the suitcase to Boston.

Unfortunately, we were in New York to honor her best friend’s distinguished dance career. At this point, all she has are the clothes on her very small back.

I plead with the angel Amtrak attendant who was my link to a better future — one that would deliver a blue canvas suitcase. Knowing I had one shot, I connect with her on a heart level and use the C card. The C card was what my sister Beth would use whenever she wanted preferential treatment. It worked everywhere except Sloan Kettering, where she was receiving chemotherapy, and nobody got preferential treatment.

My sister and my mom are the same size. Extra extra small.

The suitcase contained the beloved red leather pants that were originally my sister’s — that my mother coveted and wore proudly to every celebration. Also Beth’s boots, size 5.

I am heartsick. And ashamed. My sisters are going to be so pissed at me. And the idea that if the suitcase wasn’t returned, my mom would lose the tangible things she had left to connect her to her youngest daughter.

How we fasten ourselves to things is what’s occupying my thoughts right now. How we sort through the piles of stuff that hold our memories. Right: keep. Left: donate. Center: toss. How we cradle the past and carry it forward. There are things that cannot be replaced or repaired. Maybe alchemy, maybe witchcraft, can redeem those we’ve lost.

So much of what we inherit is simply handed off without meaning — passed to the next person, who then has to decide whether to pass it further or finally let it go.

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What was warranted: a speed shopping trip for brand new clothes.

Shepherding my beautiful mom — who cannot see curbs and has great difficulty with steps — I pushed and pulled her through pelting rain with an unruly umbrella into the land of deliverance: the Bloomingdale’s women’s department. We had a slim window to get her presentable. No makeup, no toothbrush, nothing. I dragged her into the makeup department and half-begged, half-bribed the Clarins consultant to put some foundation on her.

There are a few good things that came out of this.

There will be a blue suitcase waiting in Washington when we return home. The new clothes are now earmarked for Mother’s Day.

And the acutely loving conversations about my sister, who we lost two years ago, whose birthday falls every year on Mother’s Day. Listening to a mother who lost a child say:

I’m lucky to have had her at all.

This is the finding and the keeping.

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A note: each year around Mother's Day, I think about the jewelry I make in this same spirit — pieces meant to be passed down, held onto. If you're looking for something to give or keep, the collection is here.