What Are You Looking For?

What Are You Looking For ?

“It’s here somewhere. We have to find it.” Julie scurried around, turning over books, papers, clothing, pots, pans, everything in the house.

I came into this storm late. “What, exactly, are you looking for?”

“Oh, you know. That thing that I lost! I’ll know it when I find it,” she yelled, then threw another plate on the floor. The house was rapidly becoming a garbage pile.

“If I knew what you were looking for, I could help.”

She stopped, gave me a withering glance. “George, if you could find a whisper, a flash of light, a glimmer of a smile, where would you look?” Then she was back to her search.

Now that’s confusing. How do you find ether? Lightning in a bottle? Where do you look? Sounds like she opened Pandora’s box.

“Aha! Gotcha!” Julie screeched in the bedroom.

I ran to find my wife on the bed, holding a glass bottle with a rubber stopper. Inside sparkled a small being.

“What is that?”

“This is a lost spirit. It needs to find its way back to fairyland.” Julie peered into the bottle. The flashing light bounced around, trying to get out.

“I think that’s a firefly. Let it loose outside.”

Julie smiled at me. “No, George. We need to have a special ‘letting go’ ceremony. You don’t just take off the stopper.”

Silly me. Perish the thought.

So we traipsed outside, lit some candles on the picnic table. Julie chanted something, then unstoppered the bottle.

Out flew a shiny bug, at least that is what it looked like to me.

“Fly home, fair one! Fly free!” shouted Julie.

I sighed. Little fairy bug sure did leave a mess behind.

W/C 288