Losin' It

Let me preface this by saying I am ordinarily an organized person. Ask anyone. So I should think the odds of misplacing my cell phone, my debit card, my car, and my husband all in the same afternoon, all for the first time, were slim.

I take that back. I once lost my car in a Winnipeg parking garage. By the time I located it, time had expired for me to exit with my receipt. I had to pay extra.

I’ve frequently not known where Hubby is, either, but he seems to always come home.

Anyway, let’s back this train of thought up a bit.

One Wednesday afternoon, I was in the writing zone at my desk, where time is meaningless. Suddenly, it was four o’clock. I was supposed to be picking up Hubby from work. The thermometer read a gazillion-below-zero, too, so everything takes longer. I hurried off.

As planned, we went straight to the Co-op for groceries. While I shopped, Hubby’s jobs were to fill the car with gas and pay a cardlock bill at the service counter.

We should have planned a bit further.

I finished my shopping, paid for the groceries, and wheeled my cart to the foyer. Why had Hubby not come to find me when he finished paying his bill? No sign of him in the parking lot. Strange. Was there a long lineup at the gas bar? Had he run into a long-winded friend? Did he forget all about me and go home?

By this time, darkness was falling. I reached for my cell phone to text him.

My cell phone wasn’t there.

Shoot. I’d left it on my desk for the first time ever. The Twilight Zone theme pressed in. I was immediately pulled back decades, to memories of waiting in the Co-op foyer for Hubby, with a cart full of groceries and no way to reach him. I didn’t know whether to be mad or worried. What if he’d collapsed? I didn’t want to abandon my cart, and I sure wasn’t going to push it all the way across the frozen tundra to the gas bar.

I wheeled my cart to the service counter where I waited, keeping an eye on the front doors, while the clerk helped another customer. I asked her if I could stash my cart behind the counter while I walked over to the gas bar to look for my husband…by the way, had he been in to pay a bill?

Yes, he had. And she had my card.

Huh? What card?

She walked to the safe and pulled something out, then handed me the debit card I’d apparently forgotten to remove from their debit machine. First. Time. Ever.

Then she let me use her phone. In my state of mind, I couldn’t remember Hubby’s cell phone number. She waited on the next customer while I had a good think. Still not sure I recalled it correctly, I gave the clerk a number to dial. After three rings, Hubby answered.

Me: “Where are you?”

Him: “Right in front of the store.”

He confessed he had thought I was taking a while, but after eight hours on his feet in the frigid weather, he felt perfectly content to sit in a warm car as long as necessary. The store’s corner wall blocked his view of me, and a truck blocked my view of him.

How could I be angry? If he’d come and found me, I wouldn’t have known about my missing debit card until the next time I tried to use it.

Shakespeare said, “All’s well that ends well.”

John Lennon is often credited with saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

I prefer Romans 8:28. “…we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (The Message)