Things have been going so well that there's almost an odd relief in losing my phone, although the timing is less than ideal. If you see it, send it home, but I suspect I will never see it again. And I am sad that the young woman at the restaurant was not charmed when I tried to describe to her the wonderful photo that would have popped up, should she find it. (I'll put that on the Facebook link when I'm finished here.)

But the loss of the phone got me thinking: Why, when we lose things, do we say we forgot them? I never forgot my phone. True, it wasn't uppermost in my thoughts in what was, after all, the 18th or 19th hour of a very long day. But isn't that healthier?

I hate losing things. Of course, you're thinking, everyone does. Let me be clear: I REALLY hate losing things. I castigate myself, I find it hard to sleep. I slept perhaps two hours, tops, last night, which is not the best preparation for flying to Florida, doing a book-signing, then driving up to Georgia where I have another event Monday.

Inevitably, my thoughts went to Elizabeth Bishop's poem, which I thought was called The Art of Losing. But, of course, I was wrong.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love)
I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Now the art of winning . . . that's much harder to master.

I lost a brooch once, or thought I did. It was my grandmother's, three seed pearls set in intertwining bars of gold. I couldn't bear to tell anyone that it was gone.

Three years and two moves later, I opened an old picnic basket I use as a sewing catchall and began sorting the things in it. There, stuck to the side, was the pin.

Ever found something you thought was lost to you forever?