now that I have it ...

Over three and a half years ago, on a different website, I wrote about wanting to find an egg timer that we'd used in our family for keeping track of how long we spoke during long-distance phone calls. My mother was sure she'd saved it, but for some reason, when I asked for it, wasn't able to find it. My desire to have the egg timer focused mainly around what I had written. I'd never been particularly attached to it as a child. Frankly, other than being reminded of it through my writing, it was rather unclear, even to me, why I might want it. True, I'd written specifically about that red one, but it was little more than a passing vignette, and any egg timer (if I needed a photo of one at all) would have been sufficient.

Still, I asked my family to try and find that egg timer, and once I'd made that initial request, it ceased being an object that brought up vague familial recollections. Somehow it became truly meaningful - a sort of quest, something that had to be searched for, and ultimately found.

We still haven't found it. But my sister bought me a new one - a replacement for something which was never really missing. And now I have it. It's not the original, and even though it's inexpensive it seems more like a designer egg timer than the simple red one I remember. And because this new egg timer was purchased with the thought of replacing an old one, it has now taken on whatever meaning the old one had. On it's own it means nothing, but as a replacement for that old one, which of course also meant close to nothing, it becomes a significant object.