Tony, Tony, look around … Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a bad habit of losing things. I like to ascribe it to simply having too much on my mind: with three kids, each with their own schedule, plus work and trying to keep the house in some semblance of working order, how can I remember where my phone and my keys and my identification are? It’s all just too much to keep track of. I’ve lost all of those things, plus jewelry and purses and a stroller and countless hats, gloves, jackets and other items of clothing. I tell myself I don’t lose things that are truly important. I’ve never lost one of the kids — so far. I haven’t even forgotten to pick anyone up, although I admit to having run late sometimes. The fact is, it bothers me. Quite a bit. Having to admit to losing something, again, punches a hole in the image I like to have of myself — the image I would like other people to have of me — as a reasonably competent adult who can be safely let out of the house on her own. So when I spent some time with the relics of St. Anthony of Padua this month, I felt like I was visiting an old friend. St. Anthony, as any scatterbrained Catholic knows, is the patron saint of finding things. Of course, he was also the first Franciscan theologian, a preacher who was marveled at in his time, privileged to hold the infant Jesus in his arms, an advocate of the lowly and the downtrodden, the saint who holds the record for speed of canonization after his death. But those aren’t the things that have me turning to St. Anthony on a regular basis. No, I ask him to help me find my things. Preferably before their absence becomes a problem. Imagine, then, how annoyed I was when I went through my bag the day after visiting St. Anthony at St. Peter’s in the Loop, and found my camera, which I had used to take pictures of the relics, wasn’t there. It’s a few years old and a little beat up, so it has no real monetary value, but I wanted the pictures. I practically turned the bag inside out, searched the table where things get parked and the shelf where the camera normally resides in case I had taken it out without realizing it. Nothing. And the last place I remembered having it was at St. Peter’s. By then, it was Friday evening and the church was closed until midday Saturday. After it opened, my husband and I took a ride downtown and, while he waited in a loading zone, I went in to ask the security guard if it had been found. Sure enough, he was handing it to me almost before I had the question out of my mouth. My husband Tony laughed at me for worrying. “You left it in a church, when St. Anthony’s relics were there, on St. Anthony’s feast day,” he said. “How could it not be there?” Now I’m wondering how I lost it in the first place. Maybe a message from St. Anthony, not to take him for granted?