It was harder than it sounds. I didn’t feel it. And I wanted to feel it, and I wanted my kids to feel it

My husband gave me a gift this Chanukah. Around here gifts are usually books, but this one came in a thick paper gift bag, embossed in gold, with rope handles. Inside the bag was a small black velvet box. Inside the box was a pair of gold and diamond earrings.

At first I wore them only for Shabbos. But… they were really so pretty, so sometimes I wore them during the week also. Just, like, when I needed a boost. Like the Monday a couple weeks before Purim, when I had to take the kids for costumes, and buy mishloach manos supplies, and drop off and pick up the kids from various Morahs and babysitters, and other stories.

When I finally got back home, I was wearing only one earring.

I shook out my coat, I brushed through my sheitel. I turned the house upside down, I turned the car inside out, I retraced my steps, I called all the people and places I had seen and visited that day. I was sure it would turn up.

But it didn’t.

Every time someone left the house I would remind them to look out for my earring, every day when I dropped off the baby at Morah I asked if she had found my earring. I walked around the house looking down, I talked to people while my eyes traveled everywhere in the room. I looked under the beds, under the car seats, in the laundry basket, in the same places again and again and again.

Nothing.