The Magic of Found Objects

by Maddie Dawson

way. You can look for good things instead.” Look for good things. Nobody at my New Hampshire house ever talked like that; there was always some big problem going on, and even if we’d been outside at night, Daddy or Maggie would never have stopped walking and said, “Look! Just look at those millions of stars!” And yet Mama said that nearly every night. Mama was always looking for signs. Seeing a cardinal meant that somebody we loved was thinking of us. If we saw a snakeskin, that meant that we were going to have big changes. If your right palm itched, you were going to get some money—and if your left palm itched, that meant you were going to have company. Or maybe I have it backward.

“The marriage counselor said that sometimes we tell ourselves a little story, and we just

hold on to it until it feels like it has to be true, and we can’t switch out of it.”