One day out of the foggy gray sky, my mother got a call from Sheila, an old college roommate of my sister's. "I saw your name in the paper!" Sheila said. "I'm sure everyone is telling you by now."
My mother assured her that no, no one was telling her anything by then. "My name is in the paper?" she said.
"I was reading the fine print," Sheila said, describing the list of all those people for whom the state is holding unclaimed property. "Your name is on there!"
My mother never reads those things. Who reads those things? "Get the paper!" Sheila said. "This could be a windfall."
My mother got the paper, and a magnifying glass. She went down the list, and there it was: Claire W. Laskas. Well, there couldn't be too many of those. She racked her brains trying to figure out what the mystery property could be. Some old savings bond that had matured? Some long-lost inheritance?
She called the phone number provided, gave her information, and a few days later got a form in the mail. She filled out the form, got it notarized, sent it back in.
Months went by, and nothing happened, and she forgot all about it.
Then one day out of another foggy gray sky, she got a mysterious envelope in the mail addressed to Claire W. Laskas. She opened it and inside found a check for $910.
"A windfall!" she said to my father. No information was provided. Just a check from the state.
She called to tell me the news. She said the only thing she could figure was that the money was from an old insurance policy that my grandmother had taken out on her baby brother, my mother's uncle, whom she had raised before my mother was born. "In those days poor people really needed to be sure they had enough money to bury people," she told me. "So there were all these little insurance companies. A man would come by and collect the pennies and give her a receipt. It was something like five cents a month."
My grandmother died more than 30 years ago; she and her baby brother had long since lost touch. My mother handled all of my grandmother's affairs. It could be that she missed this one. That was the only thing she could figure.
I asked my mother, who is 82 years old, what she was going to do with her windfall.
"Well, my first impulse was to pay for my teeth," she said. "I have a big dental bill. Then, I had second thoughts. I thought, 'No, doggone it. I'm going to blow it.'"
I learned from my sister that the second thoughts were more like third or fourth. Apparently, my mother was having a hard time choosing whether to use the money for her teeth or for getting her curtains and carpets cleaned. My sister intervened. She said windfalls are never supposed to be used on bills or on maintenance. She told her to go ahead and buy herself a treat.
