lost and not found

I'm still mentally exhausted from parent-teacher conferences last week, even though they all went well.  Still, it's very draining to have 26 extra meetings in one week, many of which went past their scheduled 15 minutes.  We had a lot to talk about!  I kept to the schedule when I had back-to-back meetings, but when the time allowed, I stretched it if the parents had more they wanted to talk about.

It feels like there was a lot of stretching, just as it feels as if half my class this year is on the Autism spectrum and/or has ADHD.  That's an exaggeration, though.  Surely it's no more than one third!

I have been cooking and running errands and even did some Christmas shopping, and it has been great to not think about school for a while.  Last night I ordered a replacement for the bismuth crystal that mysteriously walked out of my classroom last year.  That's two out of three items that went missing last year I've replaced now.  But ordering the bismuth reminded me that I'd lost the silver and amber letter opener my mother had given me, and that set me off down several internet rabbit holes.

I had this feeling that if I just kept looking, I'd find it, or one just like it, the way I was able to replace the Bill Campbell pottery platter I broke so many years ago.  This is different, though: it was vintage if not antique (it may have been antique), definitely silver if not sterling (and I think it was sterling from the amount of black tarnish it accumulated), and it had a beautiful amber cabochon set into the handle with silver leaves worked around it in art nouveau style. It was a very beautiful piece which I am ashamed now to say that I took for granted.  I had it on my desk for years among the pens and pencils in one of the mugs I keep for that purpose.  The thing is, in spite of its obvious beauty and value, I used it.  It was great staple remover and a fair screwdriver, and it lived happily anonymous among the pens and pencils.  No one knew it was there, so no one was tempted to take it. I'm pretty sure I "lost" it by leaving it out after using it to take staples out of a bulletin board.  (My classroom is often used by other groups of people in the evenings, a fact I was not sufficiently attuned to last year.)

For whatever reason, I was seized with the idea last night that it was important to replace this piece.  My mother gave it to me, and the Polish amber was a concrete reminder of her.  I haven't thought about it much in the year or so it has been missing, but last night it blossomed into importance again, so I looked online to see what I could fine.  I haven't seen anything even close to it in my Internet searches, and the one that came closest cost several hundred British pounds(!!!).

Clearly that's not going to happen.  I dreamed it was in my desk's center drawer, having somehow got wedged under the tray near the front.  I will, of course, look there when I get back to work on Tuesday, but there is zero chance that it's there.  My desk was completely emptied last May so it could be moved out with everything else in the classroom.  If it weren't for that very thorough process, I'd be able to hold out some slim hope that it's still there somewhere, but we took literally every single thing out of that room, and there was no sign of it. 

I'm surprised by this turn of events, really.  It's just a thing, after all.  Yes, it was beautiful and my mother gave it to me and now she's gone, but it's still just a thing.  Replacing it isn't going to help anyone (not even me, really, since a different one wouldn't have belonged to my mother) but part of me wants to at least try because it was my carelessness that led to its loss.  Nevermind the question of why it would be my fault that someone else stole it. It just is, and I'm sorry.