off her shoes and tuck her into bed. I turn the radio on low and she closes her eyes.
I know some of the things she’ s lost: How to cook her famous apple pie. How to tell time. My name, and my sister’ s name, and that we are her children. All of the grandchildren. Who to trust.
~
I began kindergarten I started losing things: hats, gloves, sweaters, books. Things so easy to leave behind. The lost and found was a wonder to me. Somehow, the things that you lost were magically transported to that wooden box. Nailed together in some father’ s garage from leftover pieces of wood, the box had“ Lost and Found” stenciled across each side. My mother and I stopped there almost every day before we left the school. We pawed through hats, single mittens, and jackets.
I fell asleep in the lost and found one time. My mother was late, and I stopped there as usual to search through the accumulation. For a five-year-old, and not a large one at that, the box was deep. I leaned over the side, trying to reach a gold necklace with a bluebird charm. As I pushed clothes aside, the necklace worked its way deeper into the box. I leaned over further and tumbled in.
If I was in the lost and found, did that mean that I was lost? I wasn’ t sure. I knew where I was. But I must be lost, since I was with all of the other lost things. I leaned back in the soft nest of clothes to think. It was warm, and I was tired. My mother would know where to find me, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. And that day she did.
~
I sit with my mother until I’ m sure she’ s sleeping. As I’ m walking out a man comes down the hall wheeling a bucket and pushing a gray, string-head mop. His feet barely leave the floor with each step, and the soles of his shoes sound like corduroy against the tiles. He dips the mop into the bucket and sloshes soapy water onto the floor, sweeping water and bubbles from one side of the hall to the other. Step sweep sweep. Step sweep sweep. I move to the side. He pauses to let me pass, and the bubbles crowd around his sodden shoes.
~
My mother named me Therese after her own mother. Therese died when I was seven and I have few memories of her, little more than an impression of a
38