Lost and Found

When our mother passed away in 2008, my sister Lynn found a silver necklace in a catalog. She asked if I would like to get one in remembrance of mom. It was a rose inside a teardrop. The teardrop represented our sadness, and the rose symbolized our mom’s love of yellow roses. It was a perfect idea. All five of us sisters bought one. I have worn mine nearly every day for 15 years. Lynn lost hers, bought another and then found the original. I found some earrings that looked like teardrops. They looked good together, but they disappeared after a year. 

After I graduated with my doctorate in 2009, I bought a pair of silver stud diamond earrings with gift money I received—something I had wanted for years. The diamonds were expensive enough to come with a guarantee. I wore them together with my necklace for a couple of years. The details are not important, but one day I found the back of the right earring intact, but the diamond was missing. I returned to the jeweler with the guarantee card in hand. 

Claiming the earrings must be defective if the back had let go of the front, I hoped the company would back their guarantee. After a lengthy discussion, I was able to buy just one earring. This taught me to be diligent about checking their fit. One would still fall out once or twice a year, but I would always find it within minutes. 

Then in 2017, on a Wednesday afternoon, as I pulled a hoodie over my head in my gym at school, a diamond fell out. I felt it drop, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I looked in my office and around the office door. Children helped me look. I swept the floor and asked our custodian, Stanley, to keep a watchful eye. By Monday, I gave up hope. Six weeks, yes, six weeks later, I dry mopped the gym floor, as Stanley or I did every day, and, as I swept the dust into the dustpan, I saw something sparkle. Certainly not. It couldn’t be. Oh, but it was. It was my long-lost earring. After six weeks, that little gem showed up!

This spring the same thing happened at my chiropractor’s office. After my adjustment, I pulled off my hoodie in the bathroom and noticed only the back stuck to my ear. I looked around the office and the bathroom and realized the chances of me flushing it were high. I told my chiropractor and staff, but considered it gone for good. Six days later, six showers later, the little gem showed up on the bathmat outside my shower at home. It hadn’t even made it to my chiropractor’s office. 

If you read my first blog: Meeting a Mentor, you know I stayed a few days with my friend, Amy, in Cincinnati in June. The night of my birthday, back at Amy’s after meeting Jane Friedman, I took both earrings out and placed them on the nightstand. The next day I forgot about them. When I prepared to leave Amy’s house on day three, I stripped the bed and took the sheets downstairs. As I packed my things, I remembered I had left the earrings on the bedside table. I looked. Amy looked harder. They were nowhere to be found. I told Amy they must have gotten caught up in the sheets. She looked, but I knew we would not find them in the laundry room. She had already tossed the sheets in the machine. I wrote them off. I would need to buy a new pair. That was that.

When I arrived in Fort Wayne, I told my sisters about my loss. I debated between buying something cheap to get me through the next three weeks of travel or buying a nice pair again. Because my trip to Fort Wayne was to start my website, not spend time and money going to a real jewelry store, I opted to get a $10. pair of cubic zirconia substitutes, which I am wearing as I type this story. 

After Amy’s on that trip, I stayed in seven homes in Indiana and Michigan and visited four more. I dragged my luggage in and out of my car and searched through my toiletries bag, pockets, and luggage many times, looking for wayward earrings, but never found them. Upon my return home, I carried my luggage upstairs to my bedroom, where it sat for 24 hours. When I unpacked the last bag, as I pulled out my signed copy of Jane Friedman’s book, something tiny fell to the carpet. Yes, it was a diamond earring. I had already taken my planner and my notebook from the same bag to my office. I scurried into my office and there it was—the other diamond earring, on my desk next to my notebook. Crazy, right?

Coincidence? What do you think? Have you ever lost something and found it multiple times or found it eons later? Please comment or share below.