Lost and Found

Did you ever have something as a kid, and then just ache for it later when it was long gone and you were grown up? For me it was a jigsaw puzzle of a dragon and a castle. I remember I got it for Christmas one year and me and my Mom put it together. We admired it for a couple days, and I put the pieces back in the box and stuck it up into the closet. We would bring it out every so often and put all the pieces back together again. It's a fantastical picture with beautiful imaginary flowers and a calm blue sea and a white castle in the distance. We wanted to step into that mythical place, to smell the flowers, to feel the coolness of the stone castle, to feel the gentle sea-breeze on our faces.

I don't know what happened to that puzzle. It must have gotten thrown out at some point, and it's made me sad these past few years, not having it. I'd like to visit that place again. Even though I can't put it together with my Mom, at least I can go back there. Maybe she's in that picture somewhere. Maybe when this is all over we get to go to places like that--the places we've imagined and longed for.

Every so often I go to Ebay to look for it. There must be millions of different puzzles out there, and finding my one puzzle is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've spent hours and hours and years and years looking for that puzzle.

And today: miracle of miracles. Out of the blue I decided to peruse Ebay and my search for dragon puzzled turned up this:That's my puzzle! That's it! I remember those flowers. I remember studying the pieces for color and texture for each of those flowers, and for the scales of the dragon's back and for the little spires on that far off castle! That's my puzzle. And the best part? I won it this evening! If I decided to do a search for something else the puzzle would have been gone forever since there was already a bid on it and the bidding ended this evening. I am so lucky! Hopefully it should be waiting for me when I get back from Japan. I am so happy I found it. And it was only $5.51!! I would have paid fifty bucks for it but I'm glad I didn't have to. Oh it will be wonderful to get those pieces in my hands again.