the_case_of_the_missing_mints ovenbird I was packing stockings as the hour neared midnight on Christmas_Eve when I discovered that two boxes of After Eight mints had mysteriously disappeared. I checked all the carefully organized bags of gifts but they weren’t there. I checked the pantry. I checked the kitchen cupboards. I checked my bedroom closet where I’d hidden the presents. Nothing. I started to get more creative. I checked bookcases and random drawers. I checked backpacks and luggage I hadn’t used in years. I could remember the afternoon I did the wrapping. I could remember the mints sitting on the dining room table ready to be put into the bag of things destined for stockings, but like some holiday Bermuda_Triangle they disappeared without a trace. After half an hour of searching I gave up. I assumed they would turn up in some bizarre location months later, but in the end it didn’t take that long to find them. I found them this morning…when my children unwrapped them…having found them under the tree with their other presents. It all came back to me then—how I was worried they didn’t have enough gifts to open so I wrapped the mints just to pad things out and then completely forgot I’d done so. The totality of the forgetting was quite disconcerting and I panicked a little about the deteriorating state of my mind. There’s a good chance that a lot of things will go missing as the years take their toll. This is just the beginning of all the things I will lose. Yet, there’s a possibility, even at this late stage, of stumbling upon things I thought were gone forever, things I didn’t even realize I’d misplaced. What a beautiful surprise it is to find love tucked away in the most unexpected places, wrapped, and waiting, and nearly impossible. Today as I walked my dog with my mom laughing at my side, as I took in the view of the snow capped mountains, as I put the very first album on a brand new turntable, as I listened to music given to me in an act of love that wrote itself indelibly on my heart, it felt like I’d found, hidden beneath the discarded boxes and chaos, everything that matters in this wild, insistent, and broken world. And for a moment there was peace. And for a moment I forgot to be afraid. 251225 what's it to you? who go blather from