The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

I think it often happens like this. You wait, and hope, until eventually the hoping seems in vain and the thing you wish for begins to seem impossible. You try to forget, to move on. And sometimes, once you have gone through this painful process, by some peculiar alchemy, it happens.

This is what it is to be young: this is what people mean when they talk about the freedom and folly of youth, the reckless glamour of it. It is the purest sort of intoxication, this flying over rough ground so that the breath is knocked out of you, whizzing through the world with such power and grace and danger.

the most precious memories can be damaged with too much handling, as with all delicate objects.

‘War happens to people, one by one.’ That’s exactly it, you see. Until it happens to you, you have no way of understanding it, let alone imagining it. Until then, it is simply a monster under the bed.

I think we carry all of our past selves with us, in tight layers. Somewhere within you is that girl, however many other, new selves you may have grown in the years since. She’s what holds you together, at the very center.”

In many ways, my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that. Lost: love; found: independence. Lost: a daughter; found: a granddaughter.” I felt something expand inside me at this, almost a pain—but of the best sort.