Lost and (miraculously) found

The sadness of the last few days kept me from writing about something happy that occurred last week. After we took the girls to see “The Nutcracker Suite” in Boston on Sunday the 14^th, my original plan was to stay in Sharon while Barry went back to New York for a few days. On Saturday evening after Sabbath, we ran out to a small nearby toy store to pick up a few additional Chanukah gifts for the children. I had my walker, and had put my purse and my oxygen in it while I went around the store. After Barry paid for the toys and we headed out to the car, I suddenly realized my purse was not sitting in the walker. Barry frantically ran back into the store and looked all around, but it was nowhere to be found. We drove back to our apartment, thinking maybe I had not taken it in the first place. No luck. We returned to the store and it had not been turned in.

We went back to our apartment where Barry got on the phone and had my cell phone disconnected and cancelled all of our credit cards. Instead of my original plan to stay in Sharon, I returned to New York with Barry on Monday morning so that I could go through all my files and get busy reconstructing my life. We spent the following few days shopping to replace items and ordering replacements for the contents of my wallet and purse, including rather expensive orders we were forced to place to change the locks to our house and on our new car. We had done all we could on Thursday so we decided to drive back up to Sharon to salvage what we could of Chanukah with the children. Somewhere in there I even managed to make potato latkes, both plain and spicy sweet potato, and was determined to share them with the family.

At some point after we settled in to our Sharon apartment, I picked up the phone to check voice mail. The first two messages were from a friend who had ultimately reached me in New York. I assumed the third was likely a robo-call since we seldom use that phone. Fortunately I had the good sense not to push the “delete” key too quickly. The caller was an employee of the supermarket that is in the same strip mall as the toy store, and she believed she had found my purse. We were incredulous! Of course I dropped whatever else I was doing and called the supermarket. They were quickly able to confirm that I was the owner of the purse that had been found.

We practically flew over to the store. When they handed me the purse, I immediately started going through it. Here is where the story becomes quite odd: the only thing that was missing was a pair of prescription sunglasses, an old pair that needed to be replaced anyway. All of the money, all of the credit cards, all of the IDs, everything was there.

Here is our theory. While at the toy store, we both noticed a group of teenagers roaming around. It is a small store that stocks toys primarily for babies, toddlers, and elementary school children, and seemingly does not have security cameras. To see teenagers milling around struck us as a bit odd, but we didn’t think much of it until after this happened. Barry wondered if perhaps one of them grabbed my purse on a dare, just to prove that she could. We will never know.

Lesson #1: couples should not both carry all the same credit cards. Since we had always done that, we were left without any credit cards for the few days it took to receive a new one. As the replacements have arrived, we are each taking different ones. Lesson #2: try to keep track of every automatic payment you have linked to a credit card, so that you can enter the new credit card number when you receive it. Moral of the story: we really do depend quite heavily on credit cards!

Whether you are on winter break, have snow or rain, or are celebrating a holiday, just be safe and warm and well!

Love,

Rebecca