The sweetness of lost things

I could say it was the last place I thought of to look.

That would be misleading, as I never thought to look in the location this story ends.

It is such a simple thing how something so tiny can mess up your week.

By tiny, I mean earbud tiny. As in the actual earbud. There was a time not that long ago I didn’t even know I needed earbuds.

But since receiving a pair for Christmas, my earbuds have become more and more essential. They are a part of just every phase of my day.

I pop them in to listen to podcasts when Pup and I take our morning walk.

I use them to talk on the phone so that my hands can be free to write stuff down or multi-task.

They go in my ears to do my workouts. This is what I was about to do Friday.

I opened the case as I had done a hundred times that day. There was only one earbud to greet me. The hole where I expected to find the other one waiting for me might as well have been as big as The Grand Canyon.

I turned the house upside down. Bedroom. Kitchen. Office. I retraced my steps over and over.

The ear bud was nowhere to be found.

Finally, I turned it over to St. Anthony, the saint of lost things.

My mother taught me that this always works.

St. Anthony always comes through.

On his own time, which meant I had to get on with my single-bud life.

This brings me to my naughty candy habit. I’m kind of addicted to these little hard caramel candies.

I’ve been known after lunch to stuff a handful of them in my pocket for little treats to get me through my day.

I went in for an extra big scoop on Sunday, the better to drown my missing earbud sorrows.

As I reached my fingers down, I felt something unfamiliarly familiar.

Sure enough, there in the palm of my hand amidst the glistening gold foil wrappers was my missing white earbud.

It all came back to me.

How I had pulled the ear bud out when Husband came in to talk to me and shoved it in my pocket.

How I had noticed at the end of Friday that I had some leftover candy. I decided to be good and put those back in the candy bucket. I must’ve scooped my earbud up and put it back with the caramels.

You know how this is, Dear Reader?

Did you lose a treasure this week?

Did St. Anthony have your back? To remember that the things we love can be gone in a flash without any logical explanation. How sweet it is to get it back. And most importantly, whatever you do, never ever put extra candy back in the bucket.

Eat more candy; lose fewer things.