Finding Things
When I was young I used to dream about finding coins. One after another, as I walked along a sidewalk, coins would appear. Pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters. And I would pick them up until they grew heavy in my hands. They were happy dreams, and even after waking I would feel lucky.
I don’t have those dreams anymore, although I do occasionally find coins in my waking life. When I do, I always think about those dreams of coins filling my hands.
We all find things; things lost or longed for. And when we do, those moments can become touchstones in our lives, so that many years later we remember, and talk about them. Like the time I scoured high and low for a hundred-dollar bill I had been given as a gift and couldn’t find anywhere, until my daughter, about 10 years old at the time, walked over to me announcing “look what I found!” It had been in my closet, where she had been looking for ribbon. The feeling of relief and joy in that moment still lives within me, and has become woven into the story of my life.
Sometimes though, finding things is a much less dramatic event. Scott and I sometimes hike in the winter, and for months and months the forest edge is barren. So, sometime in March I begin looking for signs of color where there is none. In early April my hopes get higher, as I continue to scour the trail for signs of life. A few green leaves may appear, but not much else. And then one day it happens. The longed-for is found. Bright golden flowers rising from dead brown leaves. Coltsfoot. And then I know that I have found spring. Or, perhaps more accurately, spring has found me. One after the other, I see them, at my feet along the trail, like the coins in my long-ago dreams.
Now that June has arrived, and color is so abundant, it’s an effort to recall a world bereft of it. Like something lost and then found, color is ours once more, and like that child dreaming of her hands full of bright coins, we are rich with it.