He once was lost, but now he is found. That is today, not tomorrow.

Well, Jack was lost, to me at least, and now he's found, and that shows you that lost and found can have many meanings. My daughter posed the most provocative question : Do you need him to be found, or does he need to be found? Is being lost about him or about you?

It is true that it more about me than about him. Sometimes I get this panicky urge to reclaim some part of my past, a place or a person that I fear is lost to me forever. I have no more family of my own heritage.  I didn't claim them when I could, and now they are claimable no more.  That's at least part of the reason why, I think, I keep rattling around in the houses and bones of my past.

But back to Jack. Part of his disappearance was very mundane. His move to a new address caused enormous perplexity with the telephone company(does he have AT&T, too? I curse them daily)Part of the disappearance was a dreadful and largely undiagnosed illness that may best be described as a broken heart, but landed him back in the hospital with a newly manifested seizure disorder, just as he recovered his ability to walk.

Part of the reason was what a friend of mine once called "going to earth." That is what the fox does when pursued by the hounds. That is what she did, a 1950's beauty( a decade older than I was)and debutant who  appeared on the cover of Life Magazine, exemplifying the "Audrey Hepburn look,"with a spread inside the magazine showing her jaw- droppingly elegant Atlanta debut. There was a 50's style paparratzi response which drove her to a little run-down cottage on St. Simon's Island (that was in the days when there actually were little run-down cottages there)where she worked in her garden, never wore make-up,and no one ever thought of her as rich, or social or beautiful. Going to earth. Literally.

And Jack triggered the" hunter and hunted" in people, too.  Wealthy from his own genius before 25, owner of a magnificent, almost mythical house, cars in the garage that included a Maserati, and other equally absurd icons of glamor, and handsome, it goes without saying, he was the object of gossip and then some. An ocean-going sailing yacht and a beautiful wife just upped the ante.

It sounds like I am making this up, doesn't it? I assure you, I am not. This, in fact, is the tamer, more believable version of the facts.

So, it was rumored that Jack was divorced, had an unhappy marriage, and those turned out to be just rumors. I am sure that anyone that creative and driven was not necessarily the easiest person to be married to, but people who really knew him, whom I encountered in my search, say that they were happy, and that when his wife died, he truly fell apart. One day he could not stand up. Not paralyzed, he just couldn't walk, or drive or live as he had.

And so we talked, and arranged to meet in October with a mutual friend, our partner in "crime" when  we were ridiculously young. I am hoping for the best. Not for me but for Jack.

Did I mention I am thinking I am going vegan? I'll let you know how that is working out next time.