The Lost Book

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/@pixabay

I wrote a long, meandering novel throughout my formative years. I started writing in elementary school and I believe I trailed off in junior high.

The spiral-bound notebooks filled an entire drawer.

Four main characters grew up together from adolescence through adulthood. As the book began with characters older than any age I’d reached, I felt somewhat lost when it came to how teenagers and adults spent their time and affections and interests. Nonetheless, I imagined my way forward.

I would write late into the night after bedtime on my stomach in the hallway, where I quietly crept to compose in the light that kept the boogeymen away. Regularly, my father caught me and chewed me back to bed.

The numbered notebooks rested in a cardboard two-drawer storage unit printed with flowers tucked into the side of my bedroom closet. When I went to college, the notebooks stayed in their drawer.

My parents divorced a couple years after I left for college. My mother stayed in our home until the divorce finalized and the house sold. Then she moved. As people do when relocating, she sent some stuff to a storage unit, some to her new house, and other stuff to the trash.

It seems the cardboard two-drawer set met the latter fate. When I moved back to Houston, I went through the storage unit hoping to find the novel notebooks. No such luck.

I’ve nearly given up finding them. I don’t know where else to look. But a glimmer of hope remains.

What long-lost childhood object would you most like to find?