Motherhood makes a woman more loving, affectionate and caring. It also makes a woman more cautious, paranoid and to an extent always overthinking.

We got our daughter her first set of ear loop when she was seven months old. Whether to get her ears pierced or not was a topic of huge debate at our home. While my husband didn’t want our girl to go through any sort of discomfort at such a tender age, I believed it didn’t involve any hassle. After  being convinced about the safety of the entire procedure and ensuring to get it done under the effect of local anesthesia by expert hands, he finally yielded to this decision.

The task itself was no big deal. My daughter didn’t shed a drop of tear. In fact she was comfortable all through and enjoyed the entire attention that she was getting by her parents, doctor and his assistants. Once the procedure was over, we felt a sigh of relief. We clicked her pictures with the beautiful set of ear rings that she wore and kept admiring her beauty.

Since then, the ear rings have become a major part of her identity. She has a twin brother and though the two do not look alike, the earrings help significantly in clearing the confusion many people have while differentiating between the two.

For us, as parents, there was nothing left about those earrings to discuss. Life was moving on smoothly and happily until one day when one of her ear loops went missing.

She had come out of her routine bath. The decrepit old massage woman, who massages and bathes her everyday, was dressing her up. I was trying to help her when suddenly I saw that the precious golden ear loop which we bought a few months back, adorned only one of her ears. I bawled, ‘Where has the ear loop gone?’ The massage lady,  who was so far lost in her own world while grappling my girl with her clothes, retorted, ‘what, which ear ring? I haven’t seen any?’. On making her realize that my tiny little tot was happily wearing ear rings since past few months, she smiled on her own senility and dotage.

It took me a while to understand where that loop went missing. One of my major concerns was that it should not reach in my kids’ hand. Else for them it will be a new delicacy to savour. While I turned the entire house topsy-turvy in order to find that missing piece, the massage woman kept sitting at the corner of room, still wondering how she couldn’t notice the loop on my girl’s ear.

Everyone present in the house was on a mission of finding the missing ear loop, but all for different reasons. While I wanted to be assured that it’s not consumed by any of my kids, the domestic help wanted to find it quickly in order to be saved from a day long task of doing the same. The massage woman, without budging, kept praying to her Lord as she didn’t want to be blamed for any sort of negligence or thievery.

We searched at all the possible places starting with the washroom where she had her bath to the flipping bed covers. Each of her toys, books, clothes were scouted around. The entire task went out for about three hours when finally the missing loop was found from beneath the hind legs of the sofa kept in the hall. It was shining bright at the dark corner we never thought of. I couldn’t help but thank God for being able to find that tiny yet precious ear piece, which I thought was forever lost.

We had put that loop back on my girl’s ears. Though she was unaware of the entire ruckus that was created in the house, she still enjoyed the attention that she got for a little while. The entire session ended and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, except me.

The grey cells of my tiny brain didn’t let me settle and relax. For I kept thinking  how that loop reached the place from where it was found. My girl never sits in that corner of the house, so finding the missing ear loop from there was surprising and to an extent mysterious.

While one mystery got resolved in the mind of this mother, another one started to unravel in her mind.