On the Transience of Meaning

Some reflections on meaning:

Six years ago, I was walking my first-born child in her stroller, returning from the bank where I'd opened an account for her. In the bottom of the stroller, secured by a latch in a basket, were her birth certificate, our marriage certificate, her social security card, and one of the final handwritten notes I'd receive from my dad, who lost the ability to write due to ALS.

When I got back to our apartment, everything was gone. I spent the afternoon retracing my steps, talking to the bank teller, searching gutters, but I never found the documents, and when my husband Eric came home, I cried because I was sure I was failing as a mother, certain my child was destined to be the victim of identity theft.

I agonized most about the government documents at the time because they seemed so official and, in turn, important.  I mailed away for a new marriage certificate, requested a replacement birth certificate. I think I froze my infant’s credit. Early one morning, the New England sun not yet on the horizon, I loaded my daughter into the carseat and took her to the social security office to get a replacement card, and I learned that there’s a lifetime maximum for replacements. My guilt increased at the thought that one day she might need a new card and be unable to get it because of her mother’s carelessness.

I didn’t know there was also a lifetime limit on cards from my father, and that I would shortly reach it.

Fast forward six years. My daughter learned to walk, learned to talk, learned to read, and as she gained the ability to do all these things, I watched my father lose those same capacities. The replacement documents came. I stored them safely, and I have not thought of the stomach dropping feeling from that afternoon in several years.

But then late one night during the pandemic, I got a Facebook message from a stranger saying he thought he had some documents that belonged to me. He said he’d never thrown them away because he knew they were valuable. They'd traveled with him through a move, gotten lost in a box in the kerfuffle of life, and only just recently had he happened upon them. He'd always meant to try to find me, he said, and if he'd contacted the wrong person, he'd keep on searching.

I thought the documents were probably mine, but when he sent a photo of my father’s handwritten note, I knew for certain they were.

We often think of meaning as being something static—once we’ve figured out the meaning of a given event, we know what it’s purpose is. But meaning is really a process that takes place over time and continually evolves. It makes sense, then, that the meaning I’d always given to that day shifted in the moment I heard from this stranger: Six years ago, I thought that day mattered because I’d risked my daughter’s security. I thought the manila envelope must have fallen onto the sidewalk, and either slid into a gutter or was picked up by someone with nefarious intent. Today, I know that in the half an hour between losing the documents and retracing my steps, a man named Earl was on his way to the town’s disability office when he found what appeared to be some important documents, and he kept them safe until he had the time to return them. And when they were back in my hands, it wasn’t any of the government documents that felt important—it was the letter from my dad, the careful handwriting, the words of love.

Today, I no longer think of that event as a day when I failed as a mother. I think of it as a day when a stranger who was kind and good planted seeds of hope.

This is why meaning and purpose are elusive. Sometimes we are so certain we know the point of it all, but rarely do we know the fullness of meaning. That only unfolds with time, which gives us the gift of space and experience and relationships so that we can construct the meaning of our lives more authentically and holistically.

When I told Earl that the documents were mine, he kindly put them in the mail, along with this note. I'm profoundly grateful for the kindness of strangers, for the postal service, and for the opportunity to have a constructed meaning over time.