I’m walking to get a quick coffee. It’s one of those March Toronto days, where the sun is near blinding and tricks you into thinking it might be warm outside. My street backs onto a school, and it seems like no matter the time, there are children running around screaming. Today is no exception.
On a graffited cable box just outside the school grounds I notice a necklace that someone had gently placed on top. The chain is rusted, suggesting it may have gotten lost at some point during one of our many snowfalls, buried until now. The great melt, which reveals what’s gone missing and also the garbage people tossed hoping it would magically get disappeared by snowbanks. The city is never grimier than just before spring. The necklace looks both out of place and exactly as it should.
The pendant looks like some kind of cheap manufactured stone, but it’s the shape that captures me. It’s one half of a heart. One of those things we used to give to our best friends or first boyfriend/girlfriend. Each wearing a half to symbolize our special closeness and belonging to one another.
I imagine when it got lost. Maybe the clasp came apart and the wearer didn’t realize until it was too late. I imagine them going back to frantically search for it amongst the giant snow drifts, until they realized it was futile. I imagine them going home with the devastation only kids feel.
When I was young, my parents sometimes used to take us to ‘look at houses’ or to Ikea or Ideomo (both furniture stores) on a Saturday morning. It’s the kind of activity that’s fun as an adult, but torturous for kids. Even though the furniture stores had ball pits, playing in them got boring quickly, so being told ‘we’re going for a drive’ meant immediate whining from me and my sisters. We never appreciated how lucky we actually were.
One of these Saturdays, I was wearing a favourite hair tie (we called them bobbles back then). It had little ‘balls’ on each end, and I would play with them until my hair got hopelessly knotted around the elastic. In agony, I would painstainkingly extricate my hair from it, losing a chunk each time.
On this particular Saturday, as I was freeing myself from the bobble it fell into a fresh snowbank. I assumed I would find it immediately, but despite my digging it actually had disappeared, like so many people hope the Toronto snow will do for their trash.
To (I assume), my parents and sisters’s great annoyance, I cried all the way home. I loved this stupid hair tie with a fervour that only makes sense when you’re young. I had probably gotten it out of those vending machines you could put a quarter in for a prize, making it irreplaceable.
I remember that we went back to that store later that spring, when the snow was fully gone. I insisted on looking for my bobble, convinced I would find it now. But of course, it was long gone. I think I was even more devastated, not having believed until that moment that it was truly lost.
Toronto in March is ugly. The last remaining chunks of snow have been stained black from months of car exhaust. There is litter everywhere. People are in bad moods when after a few days of ‘pretend spring’ we are thrust back into ‘real winter’.
This year, it’s felt reflective of the state of the world, which feels uglier than ever. I have been finding it hard not to fall into total despair.
I sadness shop for the temporary mood boost and then immediately feel guilty and even worse. I give myself social media and news ‘breaks’ and then also feel guilty that I have the privilege of being able to escape the relentless onslaught of horror.
I have to remind myself that even though I can’t control what goes on in the world, I can control what goes on in ‘my’ world. I can be kind. I can make sure my petty annoyances don’t become other people’s problems. I can work hard, and be supportive and check in on my family and friends. I can be a shoulder to cry on and ear to listen. That if I stop believing that matters, then I will have lost.
I imagine whoever lost the necklace trudging their way home after school and seeing it on top of that cable box. I imagine their elation, felt in the way only kids can. I imagine them running to tell their best friend or boyfriend/girlfriend, whoever has the other heart.
Sometimes what we think is lost forever, can be found. Waiting for us when we need it most.