Lost & found

Having walked the dog for nearly an hour, I was totally lost in my thoughts when I opened my mailbox on the way back up to my place.

There was a package inside, small, beaten and from a curious sender. "CPC Undeliverable Mail Office, 100 King St., North Sydney NS B2A 3Y6."

Australia? But there was French on the label. What was it? ... I was on such a different plane of thought -- there was a large-scale conceptualization of what happens to our energy after we die going on in the background -- that it took me until I got up into my kitchen to realize what I was holding.

I opened it hesitantly. And there it was: My trusted, supple, black leather French purse. The one I lost in Canada on New Year's Eve. Inside was a note saying it had been "found in the mailstream." My driver's license was stuck to outside of the wallet with a rubber band.

I opened the wallet. It appeared empty. I was appalled at the thought of all my personal information being in someone else's hands for certain when I realized there was something in the large snapped compartment I use as a change purse. Inside was every last credit card, gift card, identity card, insurance card, business card and coffee house punch card that had been in it. Only the cash was missing.

Interestingly, I notice that my fair French purse has not been exposed to the elements (and it was raining that day) and clearly not been knocked about in the street by cars (as I thought it may have fell out of my lap when I got out of the taxi). This leads me to conclude I lost it in one of the two places I believed I took it out of my purse: The store where I purchased something or the taxi I hailed just a few minutes later.

Whatever the case, someone put it into the mail, and Canada Post apparently sent it to Nova Scotia, from where it was mailed back to me. It made its way through Los Angeles International Airport on its way up here. So my wallet has taken quite the journey in the past six weeks.

But it's arrival comes after it was already replaced with a completely different style of wallet. So it begs the question. Which wallet will I use?