A wonderful surprise

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Sometimes, when you think you've lost something forever, it shows up like a stray dog and starts licking your face.And all you can do is laugh.Two years ago, I walked out of the house that for 35 years had been my home. In that house, I had reared three children, lost a husband to cancer and spent seven years as a widow before deciding to remarry.When my new husband took a job in Nevada, I helped him move to our new home, then I flew back to California to start packing. I hardly knew where, let alone how, to start.In 35 years, I'd collected a lot of stuff -- the kind of worthless, priceless stuff that most of us amass in a lifetime and leave, if we are smart, for our children to get rid of after we are gone.I wasn't smart. I thought it might be easier for my children to divide things up while I was still around to referee.Right. You'd not believe how many times I heard, "Don't get rid of that, Mom! I'd take it, but my place is too small for a 6-inch GI Joe action figure."Grown children want family keepsakes in theory; in reality, they want you to keep the stuff and let them visit it on occasion like a family museum.Fine. The only problem was our museum was closing; it would soon be rented out to another family. Everything except the termites had to go.I frantically started filling boxes for each of my children with things I couldn't bear to toss. My goal was to keep select mementos, not every last science project and Little League trophy in the attic.Photos were the hardest, especially snapshots of their dad. I divided them as best I could. Christmas ornaments. Books. Baby sweaters. Toys.I took no prisoners. It broke my heart. Bit by bit, I sifted it all down to a few decent-sized boxes and gave them to my kids. The younger two lived nearby. My oldest was in Los Angeles. I shipped his stuff to him. When the clerk mentioned insurance, I smiled. How do you put a price on priceless?I left town feeling sure that I'd done right by my kids.But then my oldest, God bless him, never got his boxes. I used the wrong address. I also lost the tracking slip. On my Top Ten List of Stupid Mom Tricks, nothing else comes close.The best thing about it was the boy forgave me. The worst was I never forgave myself.I've spent the past two years replacing things we lost in the move -- making a house into a home for my husband and me, a place our children like to visit, where we're building a new life and new memories together.But I could not replace what was in those boxes: The blanket my grandmother crocheted when he was born; a cowboy vest I made for him when he was 4; a photo of a high-school basketball game showing him dripping sweat, and his dad, the coach, leaning close, head to head, with the same look on their faces, the same stubborn, fierce, beautiful will to win.Can you imagine how I felt to lose those things? Or how I felt this week to get them back?I had to read the e-mail twice to believe it. While cleaning out a shipping office that had recently gone out of business, a woman found two boxes that had been returned two years ago marked "undeliverable."They were addressed, she said, to my son. My name was on the return address, but I had moved. So she looked up my e-mail address through my column and wrote to ask if I still wanted the boxes.I did. I called to thank her for her kindness. Then I called my youngest and asked him to pick up the boxes to keep until his brother arranges to get them.They are out of my hands at last. And all I can do is laugh.(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077, or at www.sharonrandall.com.)