fbhjr

Two years ago, about this time of year, my wife and I visited Australia and New Zealand.

At the Auckland New Zealand museum, I bought a decorative wood carving that I thought was cool.
As we few back to Australia with it, security too it away from me as it was considered a war club and therefore a weapon.
I offered to check it, but they said it was too late. My choices were to give it to them or be arrested for trying to bring a weapon on the plane.
So, I gave it to them. They let me get a photo of it before they took it away:

https://fbhjr.dreamwidth.org/1130606.html
or
https://fbhjr.livejournal.com/1133393.html

I had been quite mad about that. Maybe because I’ve got a pretty clear idea in my mind of what is a weapon. And, that didn’t fit it.
But, I also didn’t want to go to jail in New Zealand.
I was mostly angry that they didn’t give me any option to check it in or mail it. It seems like a bad layout of security not to give people that option.

While there have been a few jokes about it as I’ve gone through airport security many times in the two years since, I didn’t think about it too much.

So, when I opened my present from my cousins this Christmas, I was very, very surprised to find this:

I may not have been thinking about it much over the last two years, but apparently my cousins did.

When my cousin Katie and her husband Tom went to New Zealand this fall, they called up the photo of my lost "war club" and went to the same museum and showed it to the people at the gift shop. (Who apparently also had trouble believing it had been taken away at security…)

They got the closest thing to an exact copy of it that was available. (They’re hand made, so no two are 100% the same.)

I really have no words for how fantastic I think this is.

They remembered my being upset by this and retrieved something I felt was unfairly taken from me from the opposite side of the planet.
That is just amazing!

I am very deeply grateful to them for this.

Not for a piece of wood.
But, for listening to me and remembering.
That’s wonderful beyond words.