Lost and Found

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"Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves"

-Henry David Thoreau

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August 24
Greenwich, Connecticut

I wave one final time, saying goodbye to Rita before climbing into the driver's seat of my completely packed car. I was supposed to have left almost an hour ago but she kept stopping me to make sure I had everything I needed.

As I backed out of my driveway, my purse in the passenger's seat fell to the floor, spilling out all of its contents. I groaned to myself at the mess it now left me to clean up, and as my eyes scanned the floor they immediately fell on a small white envelope with my name inscribed on the top. The letter was left on the counter for me this morning, but I didn't even need to open it to know what it contained inside. My parents had not been home for the first day of school for the past four years, and me leaving for my second year of college was no exception. Every year a note was left in their absence saying how much they missed me and how proud they were of me. I stopped reading them two notes ago.

My parents weren't bad parents, there was no secret hidden trauma under the surface, they were just too busy to worry about the mundane average things of a child's life. This included birthdays, dance competitions, and, most notably, graduation. But they ensured that these events never went by without an extravagant gift and my one-woman cheering section, Rita.

I try to turn my focus back on the road for my four-hour drive ahead of me. I turn the music up to full volume in an effort to drown out the thoughts that seem to be on a constant loop in my head recently. It doesn't work.