I don't wear a lot of jewelry. I was given all sorts as a child, but none of it took except for the thin gold rings in my ears—pierced when I was twelve—and I don't take those out except for MRIs. For most of my adult life, the total was one ring, one wristwatch, and one necklace. (Now it's three rings, but it looks like two, one on either hand. One is my wedding ring. The others are the silver sundial ring I've had since my sophomore year of college and my engagement ring with the design of two cats. I wear the latter two on the same finger and they look like one complicated motif of cats and stars.) From my senior year of high school until my second year of grad school, the necklace was a Roman aureus. Eventually the weight of the coin sawed through the pendant setting, leaving both chain and coin intact but separated; then I wore a moonstone pendant inherited from my god-aunt. It was on a silver chain and after a couple of years came rather suddenly and hilariously apart. For my twenty-fifth birthday, my brother gave me a leaf-shape of opal on a thin gold chain and I have worn it every day since.
I lost it shoveling the snow at my mother's house this afternoon. Much later I found the chain trodden in the driveway slush, but not the opal itself. My best guess is that some strain popped the clasp, the pendant dropped, and the chain slipped off my neck some time afterward, but I didn't notice at the time; I came indoors and took off my jacket and looked in the bathroom mirror and was very upset. I spent an hour searching the front walk, the street, and the driveway with a flashlight and only stopped when it was full dark and I understood there was nothing I would find. If it's in one of the shovelfuls of snow that I flung up into the yard, it might come to light in the spring. It is more likely, unfortunately, that it's in the giant snow pile in the outer corner of the driveway with which the snowplows of Lexington will interact if we get any more snow. Either way, I do not know if I will ever see it again.
It is a very important piece of jewelry to me. Only the sundial ring had lasted longer and that was not a gift from my only sibling. Opal is my birthstone; the leaf-shape was significant, because while I talk all the time about the sea, I spent about half of my childhood in trees. I am trying not to let myself get stuck in the suicidal loop which says of course you lost it, you always lose things you love, you are careless and cannot take care of things and the surest way to destroy something beautiful and irreplaceable is to tell you to keep it safe, because rationally I think that is garbage even while it feels like the inescapable logical conclusion from the evidence that I no longer have several very important things in my life. But even without it, I am very sad. I talk all the time about the underworld, too, but I don't know if I can count on my jewelry to know from Persephone.
I lost it shoveling the snow at my mother's house this afternoon. Much later I found the chain trodden in the driveway slush, but not the opal itself. My best guess is that some strain popped the clasp, the pendant dropped, and the chain slipped off my neck some time afterward, but I didn't notice at the time; I came indoors and took off my jacket and looked in the bathroom mirror and was very upset. I spent an hour searching the front walk, the street, and the driveway with a flashlight and only stopped when it was full dark and I understood there was nothing I would find. If it's in one of the shovelfuls of snow that I flung up into the yard, it might come to light in the spring. It is more likely, unfortunately, that it's in the giant snow pile in the outer corner of the driveway with which the snowplows of Lexington will interact if we get any more snow. Either way, I do not know if I will ever see it again.
It is a very important piece of jewelry to me. Only the sundial ring had lasted longer and that was not a gift from my only sibling. Opal is my birthstone; the leaf-shape was significant, because while I talk all the time about the sea, I spent about half of my childhood in trees. I am trying not to let myself get stuck in the suicidal loop which says of course you lost it, you always lose things you love, you are careless and cannot take care of things and the surest way to destroy something beautiful and irreplaceable is to tell you to keep it safe, because rationally I think that is garbage even while it feels like the inescapable logical conclusion from the evidence that I no longer have several very important things in my life. But even without it, I am very sad. I talk all the time about the underworld, too, but I don't know if I can count on my jewelry to know from Persephone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}