The Art of Finding Lost Things

On the subject of legacy, my grandmother showed me how to find lost things:
Stop looking. Sit. Think back to when you last saw the object and play back the reel until the answer comes to you. Be patient! Resist the urge to get up and look for it as soon as you have an idea (I had trouble with that last one). If all else fails, pray to St. Anthony (I had to look it up on this site because I couldn't remember the name. I never liked asking for his help. It felt like cheating.)

The gift developed slowly. The first time I became aware of it was when I spoke to a friend who was visibly upset. She had been doing her homework on the kitchen table (due for the next week). She was interrupted at dinnertime and could not find her papers afterwards to finish the task. She looked everywhere but could not find it and was considering rewriting the homework, in frustration. I listened and applied the principles I had learned. I had her describe the whole scene in detail. We were at school so it was easy to resist the urge to go look for it. It happens that she had younger siblings and I mused that her papers could have mistakenly been set aside as scrap paper for them to draw on. Based on my deductions, she retrieved most of the homework, having lost only a few pages. I was very impressed with the efficiency of the method, but frustrated that she had lost some pages (I urged her to look on the back of drawings and so forth...).

A series of small successes followed, less spectacular but nonetheless useful. One that stands out is fairly recent. Yseult asked me if I knew where a piece of clothing was. I started by given her likely places to look for it. When that avenue was exhausted and I sensed she was beginning to doubt my abilities, I said tentatively that although this was rather unusual, I had dreamt that it might be (someplace). It turned out that was where it was. I must be St. Anthony's "instrument".

Yseult - and to a lesser extent, Paul - routinely ask me where they left things, which is great practice. We often joke that I know so well, because I hide them myself. The thing is, I have trained myself to notice when things seem out of place or what people do with objects. It turns out our right hand often doesn't pay attention to what our left hand is doing... It is quite fascinating to observe someone nonchalantly put down their glasses at an odd place while undressing or talking and then looking frantically for them later as they don't recall consciously putting them out of harm's way.

I jokingly tell Yseult to "invoke" me when she misplaces things. It sometimes work. The power of suggestion is a great ally.

I have been stymied recently by a request to find a gift that was misplaced. It was intended as a surprise for me and so I never got to see it. I can't get a clear picture of it in my mind and have resorted to unsystematic searches in unlikely places. With little success. I am not used to having objects resist my will and am a little frustrated by this sad state of affairs (not to mention saddened by the temporary loss of the present) and have developed theories for the resistance:
A) I never touched the object and cannot "call" it to me.
B) My emotional attachment is getting in the way of The Method.
C) It's a cover-up. The present never existed in the first place.

Which is your answer:
If you answered A: That, of course, is strictly BS since that is the case most of the time but once I expressed the thought, I sort of enjoyed the idea of possessing a magnetic supernatural power - Magnetic Woman: Finder of Lost Socks!
If you answered B - I think you might be onto something.
If you answered C - I just made that one up. It thought it would be funny.


Oh, and BTW, this long post is testimony that I am again having trouble sleeping...