The Magic of Found Objects

by Maddie Dawson

I came into the world as both a surprise and a complication, which tells you everything you need to know about how things have gone ever since.

I’m not sure either one of us has ever figured out what love really is supposed to be about.

“Then the other day I actually found myself asking Google, ‘How do you fall in love?’” He shook his head. “Yeah? And what wisdom did the Google have to offer?” I shrugged. “Google said you can’t force it. That’s why it’s called falling.”

He’s smiling at me. “I don’t think,” he says, “that I want to live in a world in which this isn’t the kind of love that really matters.”

I have loved you ever since you were just a little teeny tiny baby. Even before you were born, I loved you.”

I want to reassure her that this is what life is all about, and that it will get so much better in time, but I’m afraid she’ll pull a tire iron out from underneath the pile of newspapers and kill me with it.

She also told me stuff she believed, like how you were supposed to have as much fun as you could. You had to find work that was like play, and then you could be having fun all the time. Some people didn’t know that life wasn’t supposed to be hard.

“If people want to think that life is hard for them, then they are welcome to that idea, believe me. But you don’t have to see it that way. You can look for good things instead.”

I sat on the porch by myself watching the day fade away. Watched the night as it crept across the sky. Too scared to move. I made deals with the universe.

I figured out that grief is something you can get used to. You shrink it down, put it in your pocket, like a phone number scrawled on a piece of paper, and maybe after a while, you just leave it in your drawer and don’t carry it with you at all.

I don’t think I know exactly what prayer is, but I would gladly fall down on my knees on Tenth Avenue right between this nail salon and the Indian restaurant if I could feel really, really loved.

Getting old is not for the faint-hearted, believe me.

Character was who you were when all the rest was stripped away.

Life is what you make it. See yourself as a victim, and that’s how it will always be.”

In fact, they don’t even seem to be worrying that the oncoming storm is going to be the end of the world. Or maybe they’ve decided that if the end of the world is coming, they might as well be dancing when it happens. If that is the case, then I salute them.

And I believe that nothing ever really is an accident. And I believe in love at first sight and that love is a way of seeing the world, and that nobody is safe from it, because it just takes over; if there’s any little crack of light, it can work its way in. And I believe that we’re put on this earth to trust all joy.