My son and his family have moved home to Beaumont. They still have things at their house in Houston so it'll look lived in until it sells. I rode with him back to Houston last Sunday to pick up a few things from the house. The main thing he needed was his social security card for his new job.
When we got to the house, he went to the place he thought the card was and it wasn't there. He told me to check in a file cabinet in one of the bedrooms while he looked somewhere else. Neither of us could find the card. We went on to load up other things from his list and, from time to time, we'd look for the card.
After packing and shuffling around for a half hour or so, I decided it was time to get Saint Anthony involved. In case you don't know, St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. I said, "St. Anthony, something is lost and must be found." My son, being used to his saint obsessed mother, moved on to other items on his list.
Right after I said the prayer to St. Anthony, he said, "Check that file cabinet again." This time when I checked the cabinet, although I still didn't find the card, I pulled four folders that I thought he might need later even though they weren't on his list of things to bring home. He said, "I don't really have a place to keep those." I said, "I'll keep them at my house. It might save you a trip to Houston later. You never know."
Eventually, we gave up on the card. Cory decided it might be in his truck. On the drive back home, I again mentioned the file folders I had insisted on bringing home. I told him, "You know, you just never know when you might have an emergency need for your marriage license or that other stuff I grabbed. Maybe you'll just have to have a passport or something."
Those file folders kept nipping at my brain. I didn't think the social security card was in them, but I was certain he'd need something else in those folders before his next trip back to the house in Houston.
When we got back to Beaumont, Cory checked his truck and the card wasn't there. We went to my mom's for lunch and when he was leaving to go back to his in-law's house I told him, "When you find that card, let me know where it was. I'm dying to know." He said, "YOU'RE going to find it." Though that was an odd thing to say, being from a fairly psychic family, we don't question little outbursts such as that.
When I got home that evening, after leaving my mom's house, I unloaded all the things I brought back from the house in Houston to keep at my house. I put the folders upstairs and didn't give them much thought.
When I finished putting things away downstairs, I went up to my office to check my e-mail and saw the folders. Instead of putting them in the file drawer in my desk, I decided to look through them first.
The first folder I opened, the "Wedding Stuff" folder, had an envelope in it. Inside the envelope? The social security card.
St. Anthony rocks.
