The profound power of a lost earring

Don't be upset - it's only an earring," my husband said to me. He surely meant well, but it was not what I needed to hear.

Sitting at an outdoor party at our daughter's house on a perfect summer night, I'd absently reached up to straighten my hair and instantly felt an absence.

Where an earring had been was a bare space. My late mother's tiny clip-ons with the blue-green stones that matched her eyes were now reduced from a pair to a singleton.

Neither of us ever had the courage to pierce our ears, and that always posed the ever-present danger of slippage.

Of course, I searched the grass, reached under my chair and table, and enlisted the help of others. We became a search party, bent, literally, on a mission.

But that earring had vanished into the summer air.

I tried hard to get back into the evening's lovely vibe, but that missing earring wouldn't allow me. When an object has a history and a legacy - when its value is purely sentimental, not economic - the loss feels profound.

I was again remembering the weeks after Mom's death, when we needed to clean out her apartment, and, in the process, had to collide with the pieces of her life.

The big things were easy - the sofa went to my sister, the painting I loved to me, the antique china to the granddaughter who had always admired it.

But the trifles? Those were somehow the most painful confrontations of all.

Did we dare discard the pink sweater she'd loved, the blue-chiffon dress she'd worn to a great-granddaughter's bat mitzvah, or her frilly organdy aprons?

And what about the costume jewelry that Mom had kept in two jewelry boxes, one with a broken latch? What in the world were we to do with all of that?

I sobbed over her tiny bracelets (my mother's wrists matched her petite frame). And, oh, the earrings. A woman of such simple tastes had a weakness for them: tiny pearl ones, dainty drop earrings, an unexpectedly flashy pair of gold dangles that I never remember seeing her wear.

But the pair that beckoned to me were those little gold ones encrusted with blue-green stones.

I was heartbroken when I left our daughter's house that night. After all the crawling around in the dark with a flashlight - after checking the kitchen where I'd been helping Amy, and the playroom where I'd worked on a huge puzzle with my granddaughters - no earring.

Back at home, I wrapped the lone one in tissue paper, realizing even as I did it that this was a foolish vestige of hope.

Weeks went by. Every now and then, I'd unwrap Mom's one earring and just stare at it. What power objects have over us - especially when they remind us of people and times that mattered.

Last week, we were back at Amy's house in Montclair, N.J. She seemed especially ebullient - I thought maybe it was because of her new haircut.

Amy led me to the dining room table. And there, on a cloth napkin, was her grandmother's earring.

Evidently, a few days before, 12-year-old Emily had seen something sparkling on the grass - this after rains, winds, and several mowings.

I can only say that of all life's miracles, this one will always stand as magical.

To everyone else, it may only be an earring. But it was an earring that was hers.