My mother in law gave my husband and me a plate from china. 5 years ago when she came to the US she brought it to us from Morocco. It seemed to be a strange thing to bring from Morocco, but it became ours. About a year ago my mother in law realized the plate was missing. She couldn’t find it anywhere in the house. Now, our house isn’t big, but we looked all over for this plate. As time passed, I saw how much it bothered her that the plate was gone. I also started wondering what on earth could have happened to it. When we went to France this summer, I saw that two of her sisters have matching plates. That increased my disappointment that I had lost the plate somehow. Last week I was walking to school to drop off mittens for the girl. I remembered the first holiday concert that the boy had participated in years ago. It was cold outside but too hot inside. The girl was restless and cried a good deal of the concert so I was in and out. After the concert there was a little holiday party in the Kindergarten Pod. We couldn’t stay though because A was just too restless, we just left. It was then that I realized I had brought brownies on the Asian plate. I must have left it at school. So, when I reached the office, I asked the nice ladies who work there where one might find a lost plate from a school function. “How long ago?”, they asked. “Four years ago” I replied. (insert belly laughing.) No seriously, they directed me to the PTO closet and to the teacher’s lounge. To no avail. But, I thought it was a valiant effort. When I got home, I decided to try one more thing. I used a local connection service called “mom mail” and sent a message to all current and past Irving parents. I then went into detail about the plate again. Two days later I got a message from a teacher at the school. She had the plate. I’ll be wrapping it up to give back to my mother in law for Christmas.