The Sign
// August 30th, 2010 // 20 Comments » // Faith, Family, My Fabulous Life
For over 30 years, this sign hung at Mom and Dad’s trailer on the river summer home in Wisconsin. Even after Dad died nearly 14 years ago (seriously? that long?), Mom left the sign up. It was still “The Charles Wilsons” (doesn’t that need an apostrophe?) and oh, how he loved this place. He drove up there by himself in the few years before Mom retired, just to fish and putsy in the yard and in his shed like (some) men do. Organizing nails and screws in the baby food jars and painting outlines of tools and fishing poles on the walls, so we’d know exactly where to put things back in their proper place.
He was an organizer, not a pile-er.
So it was with great emotion that my eldest requested to have the sign when Mom sold the place and we moved her home for all future summers. There was considerable decrapification of the place, but that sign was something that Ben wanted. Ron Burgundy made the very last shot for the end-of-the-river video with the sign propped on his truck. It was finished.
Last night Abby (best DIL ever) emailed me and said “Did you take the Charles Wilson sign? Ben really wants it.” I assured her we would bring it when we go to see them next weekend. I reminded RB, and he went out to his truck to get it and put it in my car.
It was gone.
We looked everywhere. In the truck, under all the “stuff” (next decrapification process), in the garage. He couldn’t really remember taking it off the edge of the truck bed, but in looking at the video again, it was hard to believe that it would actually stay there and not fall in the driveway when we pulled out.
I confessed the loss to Mom, and she looked in the driveway, street, and garage. This morning she drove down the street, looking carefully on the pavement for any sign of the sign. Nowhere. In the back of my mind, I knew it had to show up, but I was just sick that this memory so precious to my son was lost. “It’s only stuff” I kept telling myself, but my heart ached, because I knew his would. I didn’t know how I was going to tell him, and thought of everything from having a new sign made and dragging it behind my car in attempt to age it, to just simply delaying the inevitable with “I forgot – I’ll bring it next time.” Hurting someone for the sake of being honest has never been one of my spiritual gifts.
Today my mom’s pastor stopped by to see her. And what was in her hand?
The sign.
While on his way to work this morning, her husband glanced at a yard sign advertising a local church festival that was posted at a busy intersection. On the sign hung “The Charles Wilsons” sign. He thought to himself “I’ve seen that sign before.” They had been up to Mom’s two weeks before for a visit. He emailed his wife about it, she stopped, picked it up and ran it over to Mom’s, a couple blocks away. Someone had apparently found it and hung it on the festival sign. She called me from Mom’s to tell me the lost had been found.
Once again I was in awe of God’s humor and timing. And admittedly a little annoyed that He was messing with me again. Why would someone bother to carefully place a 30+ year old weathered sign there? How did Paul ever notice it at that crazy intersection at 7:30 in the morning? And even more astonishing, how did he ever remember it? He had never been to her place until two weeks ago. Honestly, I knew the sign was there, but don’t remember actually seeing it for the past several years.
Mom called after Pastor Melissa left and I asked her – “How did he ever remember seeing that sign?” to which she said “He has a photogenic mind.”
Oh-kkaaay, Mom. I know you meant photographic memory.
The strange thing about that statement is that a BFF of mine mixed the photographic memory/photogenic mind thing up about 15 years ago, and we laugh at it every now and then, at her expense of course. (If you’re popping in to read this, A, love you)!
Ahhh, memories. Lovely misconstrued memories. I hope Ben paints an outline of the sign on the wall before he hangs it up so everyone knows exactly where it should go.
