I caught a rabbit.

Back in January, I picked up a pair of sleeping foxes at Anthropologie. Brass cabinet pulls for our bathroom. I stuffed the box into my tote. Onto the next —

Thirty minutes later — after breezing through Eataly for focaccia to sustain me on a seven-hour Amtrak journey to Charlottesville, VA — I sat down on a fantastical bench-like object in Oculus to catch my breath.

I reached for the foxes. They were not in my tote.

I rummaged. I scanned the white floor I’d just walked across. Nothing.

Frantic — I retraced my steps. Back across that vast hall, down a narrower hall, up several flights of stairs, through the maze of Eataly. I dialed Anthropologie. Nothing.

I checked the bathroom, whispering to myself that if I found the foxes, I would change my life.

I would slow down. Carry less stuff. Pay for shipping to my house, rather than shipping for free to a store and creating a field trip (errand?) for myself.

Exhausted, sweaty, I stopped to take off my coat.

And checked my backpack.

Which contained the sleeping foxes.

*

On Friday I caught a rabbit, which is to say, the rabbit got away. I fell forward and hit the ground. Tripped on a raised slab of sidewalk on my own block.

I am okay! Teeth and bones intact. It could have been a lot worse.

And also, it hurt.

Both knees, bloody. My bloody nose. (About to be a black-and-blue nose? What happens to a nose that rudely kissed a sidewalk?)

Glasses scratched, phone case skinned —

Oh, phone. I’ll never look at you while walking again. I will change my life.

*

ICYMI:

For The Keepthings, I wrote about the earrings my late friend Havilah Giannetta made me.

“Remember starting college and meeting the friend who cracked your world wide open? The opposite who turned out to be your twin? That's this story,” says Deborah Way, founder and editor of The Keepthings.

MY ONLY EARRINGS

She was born Havilah Giannetta, but she went by Hobbs, Hooby, the Lady of Mossgown. My name is Kasia, but she called me Rumply, as in Rumpelstiltskin. We called each other John, after the English peasant poet John Clare, who daydreamed while working in the fields much like we wrote poetry during history lectures. When we first met, in 2003, at an event …

The Keepthings

For more beautiful stories about remembering loved ones through the objects they leave behind, subscribe to The Keepthings here on Substack &/or follow them on Instagram.

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