Lost and Found

The journey began nearly six years ago. We had just moved to Colorado from Montana a month earlier. We were adapting to new jobs and making new friends. Our baby Ryley was just a one-year-old pixie of a thing. And one Wednesday night, Ryan and I sat down on the couch to watch the pilot of a show for which we had seen intriguing previews and which Ryan had read was the most expensively produced pilot of all time.

It didn't take much for us to fall in love with the story -- that of a crashed plane on a mysterious tropical island and its intriguing passengers who are most eager to survive. A culture was born that night.

Six years later, and through the miracle of video tapes set to record and (these days) TiVo, we have never ever missed an episode of LOST. It is, for us, like a beautifully written, complex novel...90 hours longer than any movie or miniseries. A story of redemption that we have followed breathlessly for almost the length of time that we've been parents.

In this season of our lives, it feels like we have less and less time to get sucked into TV shows. We've had to make choices on what we're going to spend our time and mental energy. We chose LOST.

There are rules we have set...

We don't watch it without the other.

We watch it the same week it airs, preferrably the same night. We haven't rented DVDs the way we have for other series. We've read the chapters one suspenseful week at a time, the way it was meant to be.

The piano theme still gives me goosebumps after all this time, so much so that we found the sheet music this week, in honor of the show's impending conclusion...only days away.

I post this tribute -- not to reveal how nerdy we are (you already know that!) -- but to reflect on this part of our lives that has been present for more than half our marriage. It has been something for us to look forward to, something for us to discuss and ponder.

For the lovers of a good story like we are, it's certainly been fun. There will be other stories, I'm sure, but nothing quite like this one.