Where is it?

“Under my bed is where I put it,” I say heading into my bedroom. “It’s in a plastic storage box.”

Now, I’m crawling around on the floor while a cat watches me. If cats laugh, he’s laughing.

“It’s not here,” I tell the laughing cat as I lay on my belly searching under the bed. “I moved it, but where?”

I get up off the floor and try to engage the memory of putting the box in a place I’d be sure to remember. There are several possibilities.

So, I decide to search the room that has no name. It’s not a bedroom, although it could be one. It’s not an office, but it does have a desk with a computer on it and a filing cabinet beside it.

There is also an art table filled with paints, several bookshelves and a smaller desk that holds a sewing machine. Oh, and what I call my youngest daughter’s “nest.” It’s her favorite chair where she spends a fair amount of time. Guess I’ll call it the everything room.

Anyway, back to the search. Now, I’m crawling under the desk to look through the boxes filled with stored treasures. I pull and prod, but it’s not there either.

One place left, my husband’s closet. Bless his heart (and you know that’s a phrase to excuse many things), he puts up with me hijacking part of his closet for treasure storage.

I’m standing on tiptoe trying to see the back corner of the shelf when I spot it.

“Ah, there it is,” I say to the cat that followed me from room to room. “Thank goodness.”

Of course, I can’t reach it because, well, I’m kinda short. So, I go to my closet and pull out the stepladder I use to reach the clothes on a shelf that is too high for short people.

It’s a careful balancing act to get the box safely down without dropping it or falling off the ladder. Finally, I place it on the love seat in our “music room” (another name for another everything room).

Opening the box, I see it right on top. It’s a faded red color tied with a faded red piece of cord and the words “Scrapbook” printed in the bottom corner.

The paper inside is faded as well and starting to feel a bit brittle. Carefully, I turn the pages searching for what’s been on my mind for several days.

There are assorted birthday cards sandwiched between the pages and a few newspaper clippings. I stop to look at a couple of pictures before continuing my search.

Finally, I turn a page and see what I’ve been looking for. There are two place cards glued to the page. One reads, “Nancy Folmar” and the other, “Mr. Stewart Folmar.” A Girl Scout symbol with the letters G.S. decorates the cards. I recognize my handwriting.

Above the glued cards are the words, “Valentines 68.” Underneath the cards, I wrote, “Scout Father Daughter Banquet.”

I sit for a while looking at the names on the faded place cards, remembering. Most of the details of the banquet are gone from my memory, but how excited I was to be with my Daddy on that night is still there as strong as it was in 1968.

Why did I feel a need to find this scrapbook and see these cards? Well, for several days, I’ve seen pictures on social media of fathers and daughters attending various Valentine events and it brought back my special event with my father.

So, for any of you fathers who attended or will attend an event, or who do anything special for your daughters this Valentine’s Day, I want you to know you are making a precious memory. Even if you don’t remember it, your daughter will never forget.

I know this because today a 66-year-old women spent a considerable part of her morning searching for a scrapbook and remembering a father/daughter Valentine’s Day banquet.