Hide and Sick

I lost one of my diamond stud earrings tonight. I should say I lost it again tonight because I have lost one of them three other times in the seven years three months I have been wearing them. Once it was on my pillow, once my sister found it in my parents' bathroom on the floor, and once it was on my shoulder and I later deduced it had been there for at least an hour!

My husband gave me the earrings on our wedding day. I rarely ever take them out of my ears. They are a part of me. But that is why it is always gut wrenching when I notice one is missing.

Tonight we discovered that it was missing when my husband found the backing to it on the bathroom rug. We had just switched places after I finished washing the girls in the bathtub and they wanted him to get them out of the tub. He noticed the backing and asked if my earring was missing and to my horror it was. Of course we had spent the 30 minutes before bath time playing Hide and Go Seek all over the upstairs.

My girls are not very good at hide and seek yet, something that makes me want to grab them up and hug them tight and tell them never to grow up. It is just so cute that I can be “hiding” in plain view behind a sparse bush with a bright red sweatshirt on and they can walk right by the bush and miss me while I am counting their freckles as they stand 6 inches away from me.

Anyway I had hid about 8 times and the last place I hid was a tough one- between the dresser and the wall and behind the laundry hamper with the duvet cover over my head. I hid so well because my husband was helping them look and I wanted to stump him too. I did for a minute, but then he found me and I will never forget the look of surprise and fear and joy on their faces when I popped out from under that duvet cover in a place they never considered looking.

Later, when I realized my earring was missing, I had to go through every piece of laundry in the hamper to make sure it hadn’t fallen out while I was hiding near the hamper. I ran my hand over the entire duvet cover- outside and inside to make sure it hadn’t gotten caught in it. I have never noticed so much dust or dog hair on our floor as I did tonight with my face 2 inches from it. I had to fight the urge to vacuum that second because I didn’t want to vacuum up my earring.

Of course I had also pulled off my sweatshirt and long-sleeved shirt to change into a tank top so I wouldn’t get my sleeves wet to give them a bath, and I set them on my bed with 5 quilts and sheets and blankets, two feet away from the dog bed with his two blankets. I have scoured every inch of every blanket we own because every blanket we own happened to be balled up next to the place I took off my sweatshirt over my head where my earring might have come out.

Whenever I lose something like this I am amazed at the thousands of steps I take in even a five-minute time span. At bath time and bedtime it might be close to 10,000 steps. Darting into rooms to grab a towel, a diaper, toothbrush, toothpaste, cortisone cream, socks, a hairbrush, pajamas, and relocating them all multiple times as two busy girls redistribute them from room to room.

I got that sick feeling in my stomach that I only get when something important is lost and I know I won’t be able to relax until I find it. I also had to get the girls ready for bed while being careful to watch and see if an earring fell down when I moved any object. I couldn’t stop scouring everything with my eyes. Maybe if I just look at every square centimeter of every surface of every object we have in our house, I will find it. But then, how do I know I lost it in our house? What if it is in the car? or in the walk from the car to the house? or at the Gymnastics studio? or the Warming Hut? or Trader Joe’s? or at the family’s house where I dropped off dinner so that they could have more time to care for their infant twins? What if it was in the soup or pumpkin bread I brought them? I had to stop looking and put my girls to bed. I felt like I would be sick for a week constantly looking for a tiny sparkling earring that was lost forever.

Whenever I lose something I make the same promises to myself. That I will be more organized, that I will get rid of the clutter, that I will vacuum and dust more, that I will keep better track of things that are important to me. I try to stay calm, to not beat myself up. But in my nervous energy of searching, I get more cleaning and organizing and purging done than in days when all seems right in the world.

Once the girls were tucked in and had gone potty again and had their fill of water and hugs and kisses and me sitting on the sofa “for one more minute,” I got out a flashlight and continued my search.

This was an idea from my mom who found a single stone from my engagement ring on the pantry floor of her 3000+ square foot house after hours of searching every square inch of the floor by carrying a wind-up flashlight and turning off the lights. My mom is incredible. I looked everywhere I had already looked except this time in the dark with a tiny keychain flashlight. Sadly, dog hair and dust show up in the dark too.

I turned on the light and was about to give up. I sat on my bed and took the headband out of my hair. I heard a tiny object hit the wood floor. It was my earring.