We have to take our miracles where we can find them, right? And with Barack Obama’s election being a whole huge miracle, I wasn’t expecting another one to show up quite so soon.

But then today came. I went to meet my friend, Mary Rose, for lunch at our favorite diner, O’Rourke’s, In Middletown. I was wearing my very wonderful earrings, dangly turquoise earrings picked out by Charlie back when he was six months old. (I think it was his first jewelry selection, and since he had impeccable taste, even back then, I have always loved them.) Mary Rose and I ate lunch, laughed, talked about kids and books and how we can manifest everything we want in our lives, and then we walked around the town, visited a natural foods grocery store, and stood talking at her car before we said goodbye and drove off.

Fifteen minutes later, I was at a gas station topping off my tank (gas was $2.15 a gallon in Middletown, so you have to fill up) when I happened to notice that I was wearing only one earring. UH OH! The earrings are the kind with the little wire that kind of slips through your ear, not the post kind, and so it was obvious that the pashmina I was wearing had reached up and unslid the earring. I took apart the car, shook out my scarf and my sweater, got down on my hands and knees and looked underneath the seats.

No earring.

I called O’Rourke’s from my cell phone, described the earring, described where I had been sitting, described what I had eaten (September omelet, with brie cheese, tomatoes and mushrooms), and they put the phone down and discussed this with their current customers, and then came back and said it wasn’t there.

I sat there for a moment, debating whether I should go back home and write all my stories that are due…or if I should drive back to Middletown and look for the earring. But maybe the earring was still at home, having fallen out before I left. I should go get work done. People lose earrings every day, no big deal. I’d probably find it on the floor, already digging its way through the carpet.

I went back to Middletown. I parked and retraced my steps, searching in all the little sidewalk cracks. I went to the natural foods store and walked up and down the aisles and talked to the manager there. Then I walked back to O’Rourkes and further molested the current customers and the hired help. They were very nice about everything, but no one had the earring–not even when I showed them what the other one looked like and told them about Charlie picking them out when he was six months old. I told the waitress I’d undoubtedly left it at home anyway, and she said, “Nope. You had on two earrings when you were in here. I remember that much.”

So I went outside and retraced my steps AGAIN, and still no earring…and then was ready to give up, when I remembered that next to where Mary Rose had parked was a little pile of cedar chips surrounding a little tree right on the sidewalk…and when I went and stared at that pile, there was something–just a little turquoise glimmer–from underneath one of the chips.

THE EARRING! I put it on, hurried to the car and left, doing a little happy dance (the same basic happy dance I’d been doing since Obama got elected, so by now I knew it very well)…and then I decided that I deserved a Celebratory Reward for all this, and went to McDonald’s for some of their unsweetened iced tea. (I KNOW how to treat myself well!)

I was driving out of the McDonald’s lot and thinking about this amazing fact of finding the earring when I reached my hand up to my ear…and OH MY GOD THE EARRING WAS GONE AGAIN!

So I had to drive back and go through the whole process again, getting out of the car, shaking out my scarf, looking through the seats, then searching the grounds…but this time there it was, in plain sight, just lying near the trash can where I’d walked to throw away the straw paper just minutes before.

I took both earrings off and put them on the seat and watched them very closely all the way home. Clearly one of them is not to be trusted, and who knows if that one can tip off the other one about how to accomplish this escape act?

I know this is way more detail about an earring being lost and found than you probably wanted to read about. But…when something lost comes back again even once, it’s like a red-letter event in  my life–and when it does it TWICE in the space of an hour–well, then I think forces are at work.

Just the same, though, I’ve located some little rubber tubes for the back of these wires so they can’t get away again.