I nearly snapped over a shoe

Dear Delyara, One shoe. Just one. It was missing, naturally, right when we were already late, and my son kept asking where it was in that tone children use when they still believe mothers are secretly connected to all lost objects in the home by instinct. I checked under the sofa, by the radiator, near the stairs, in the car, and then found it in the kitchen for reasons no one could explain. I could feel my whole nervous system overreacting. Not because of footwear. Because I had nothing left around the edges of me for one more stupid problem before 8 a.m. That’s what pressure looks like in ordinary homes. A grown woman feeling close to tears over one shoe and still somehow expected to speak gently while finding it.