help!!! where is the trash folder in mail?????

Hello, Karen.

Have you actually deleted any messages that should appear there?

OK. Something is amiss here, indeed. What type of account is this (POP, IMAP, .Mac)?

i just lost three very very very important emails tried to send before holiday not in trash cant find throigh finder etc. happened before.
is there an gauanteee fro mac mail?
i have trash theres stuff in it but emials poof into air and dont send or go to trash. god this is horrible, horrible.
anyway to save things backup as go along? to somewher outside mac mail that losies important stuff.
maybe we allneed to know.
seems mac mail has more bugs than free emails.?
this is too high a price to pay for 100$ per year just for no popups.

I am using IMAP for an AOL e-mail account

Well, that probably explains it. I bet you have checked Store deleted messages on the server. If so, this is not an IMAP issue, but rather an AOL issue (actually, .Mac is IMAP as well).

AOL doesn't let mail clients create mailboxes at the root level of the account directory, only as subfolders of Saved, and I'm not sure even that is possible now.

You may find instructions for setting up an AOL account in Mail here:

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/applemail.html

The instructions are for Mail 1.3, but they can be used for Mail 2.x as well, noting that the Special Mailboxes preference pane is called Mailbox Behaviors in Mail 2.x.

You may also want to read the more general guide the above article is part of:

Accessing the AOL Mail System using IMAP - An Unofficial Guide

BTW, in the case of Trash or Junk, I don't see the point of storing those messages on the server, even if that would work. They take valuable space there for no apparent benefit. I would only store Sent messages on the server (which cannot be done with AOL either).