Today I'm doing my annual search for the only thing I've ever lost that I miss: the photo of me and Adam and Brett at their high school graduation. I sort of can't believe that it's gone, although I've moved ten times or more since then, because not only did I have a hard copy, but I also scanned it in and put it on my college webpage. But no, the Internet Wayback Machine somehow missed that photo in the two years it was online, and I went through my box of printed photos just now and although I found some lovely photos it wasn't one of them.

I cannot even tell you how gorgeous we all are in the version of this photo that exists in my head, and how young, and how well I can remember exactly what I was doing: having my twentieth birthday that day, wearing a dress with big flowers that I'd borrowed from Toffie, missing Robbie (he'd just gone to Colorado for his REU), carrying both the show graduation presents that I'd bought for Adam and Brett (Princeton t-shirts) and the real ones that I'd give them when their parents weren't looking (Princeton shot glasses). I suppose the combination of graduation and birthday was enough to commit the entire day to memory, but it's one of those days I can remember perfectly--or think I can, I guess--and it just kills me that I can't find a picture of it. Maybe it'll magically turn up in one of the boxes my parents have in their basement, but I think it's just lost. Which might be for the best, really.

What can't you find?