The Prodigal Luggage

We returned Friday from a quick Spring Break trip to see my mom in Arizona. My bag had an extended vacation and finally returned home just after midnight last night, so technically, Tuesday. I've never had this happen before. Do we all kind of wonder while watching the bags go around on the carousel if it will be our turn to have lost luggage? This time was my time.

It shocks me to find so many emotions attached to my stuff. It is just stuff, after all. But as the days crawled by and still no word about my bag, I began to inventory in my mind what I had in it. A favorite pair of sandals that were bought on clearance at least 3 years ago. Worth nothing monetarily speaking, but irreplaceable. My whole skin care regimen, worth a ton surprisingly, and a hassle to replace. And since I went 3 days without it, I shall now be wrinkled and blemished forever. Just stuff that I can make jokes about now, but I was actually a little distraught during the time of waiting. That is not who I want to be.

My bag has a story, one that I'll never know. I have bits of information. The gal at the Central Baggage Office at O'Hare told me that it was found in Phoenix; the paper sticker tag from the airline had fallen off (how does that happen?) and that fortunately, since I had a big protected plastic tag of my own attached to it, they contacted every airline until they found the one we had flown on to figure out where it should go. But when the uber driver (really.) knocked on our door just after midnight (really.) and gave us the bag, the plastic tag was not on it. There's just a paper tag attached to the handle that says "Julie Dahlberg, Wildwood, IL" with no other information. Everything seems to be in the bag, just as I packed it, so I believe that the fancy tag is how my bag got back to me, but where's that tag? Why would someone take that? Where, what, who, why??? I just won't know.

I am grateful to have my suitcase returned, unharmed. All is right again, and there are many lessons to be learned. I'm sitting right now with the idea that there's a story, and there always is one. My bag would've had a story even if it had been on the carousel for me. We have stories. We carry them with us and they mark us. All the people we encounter have stories. Some we may get to know, some maybe never. Obviously, I have work to do if a suitcase full of missing belongings can leave me distraught. I want to try to hold loosely the stuff, and be sensitive to the stories, whether they are shared with me or not.