A needle in a haystack

On Monday, Roslyn's school had its "field day." When Chris and Roslyn picked me up from work as usual, I was expecting to hear glowing reports of all the fun she had at school that day. Instead, I was greeted with a very sour face. I asked her what was wrong and she said she lost her special pink hair clip that was her favorite because it was in the goody bag at her birthday party. Oh, dear. I tried distracting her from this missing hair clip by asking about field day, but it didn't work. She was fixated and very unhappy. She kept saying she wanted to go back to school and look for it. When we pulled into our driveway, Chris said dinner could wait (we were having homemade pizza and it hadn't gone in the oven yet). So I told Roslyn I'd take her back for a quick look. "YAY!" She immediately brightened. We got to school and she started to excitedly tell me about all the fun things they'd done as she retraced her steps to find that hair clip. "And this is where we had the potato sack races... And this is where we did the obstacle course..." She had had an excellent day and it was fun hearing all about it. Alas, as we scoured the courtyard, the grassy field, and the sandy playground, we didn't find the pink jewel hair clip. I kept thinking, "this really is like looking for a needle in a haystack." As we were starting to give up (Roslyn seeming satisfied that at least we had tried), I noticed something in her hair. I said, "Roslyn, guess what?" "What, Mommy?" "I just found your hair clip!" "Where is it?" "It's in your hair, sweetheart." Roslyn reached to where it had been at the beginning of the day and said, "No, it's not." "Yes, honey... move your hand down more... do you feel it?" She did, and then... THE SMILE! We hugged and laughed and talked about how silly we were. I called Chris to say we were on our way home and please put the pizza in the oven. I felt really good afterward, like I'd done something right. And I think I did.