one of the perks of making sterling silver jewelry is that i'm never left wanting for something that i fancy. i don't wear a lot of jewelry, regularly... for about the last 8 months i've been wearing the same pair of carved horn spiral earrings and a single sterling silver chain with a handmade sterling silver tag that dangles from it. i stamped "non omnis moriar" into it - latin for "not all of me will die". [digression alert] hopefully, some of the silver jewelry i've made will be passed down to another generation someday... maybe that's the legacy i'll leave. i'd like to think that pieces like this one or this one or these will enjoy a long, beautiful life and, pretentious as it might seem, i would really like to think that someday the people that currently love and cherish these things that i have made with my hands will see fit to pass them along to someone else they love. i want them to outlive me. that's the legacy i want to leave: my jewelry will still be around long after my name has been forgotten. [end of digression]
maybe i was a little untruthful when i said "i don't wear a lot of jewelry regularly"... from the neck up, i suppose it's truthful. from the wrists down, not so much. i wear 18 rings on my hands: 11 on my left and 7 on my right. there are no stones; just thin silver rings, 10 of which i made myself. (i wear 6 teeny-tiny skinny little rings on one finger on my left hand, much like these.) only my pinkie fingers aren't adorned with sterling silver. the ring on my left thumb is a james avery band that i've worn nearly twenty years; the ring on my right thumb is one that i handmade for myself last year. it's one of my favorite rings. after i made this ring, i polished it to a high shine with several grades of jeweler's sanding cloths and then, for reasons still unclear, i decided to hammer two tiny little notches into it. honestly - i don't know what came over me or why i did it... i just did it.
one afternoon about 4 months ago, i looked down at my hand at the kitchen sink and realized that something was missing... it took me a second to figure out that it was my right thumb that was somehow different from the rest of my fingers: it was naked. my thumbring was missing. last time i could remember, it was still there (or so i thought to myself)... but these rings...these rings have become little extensions of my hands. i fiddle with them while i'm on the phone at work. i turn them when i'm talking to friends. some people cross their arms or clasp their hands; i fidget with my rings. they're ever-present but completely unimposing. i wondered how long it had been since i'd actually seen my thumbring and searched for it in all the places in my house that i thought it could be, but to no avail. after a short time, i just resolved to make myself another, but i never did. i'm not sure if i was just lazy about making another ring or if i was holding out to find the original... but i never forgot about it. that ring was conspicuously missing from my thumb, which felt bare and, well, weird without it.
about six weeks later, i'd gotten sidetracked putting out some sort of fire with one of my accounts and missed my break, so i left my desk and went to break when i was finished, about thirty minutes later than my regular time. i saw my friend nicki, so i joined her. we have different breaktimes, so we very rarely see each other anymore. though we still work in the same group, our desks are nowhere near each other's, so when i sat down with her, we started catching up. we were chatting and giggling like a couple of teenagers when i realized she was fiddling with something on her finger...
what happened next i can only describe as unbelievable, at least to me. i made a comment about the lovely sterling silver ring she was wearing and mentioned that i used to have one just like it. she told me that she'd found the ring on the floor in one of the stalls in the ladies' room there at work. i think i was saying something like "no way - cool!" as she extended her hand to show it to me. i was inspecting its very familiar slightly hammered surface when i turned it over and saw the two tiny little notches...
i must have squealed when i saw those two little marks that made this ring undeniably my own. i couldn't believe it. i explained it to nicki in excited, jolting words that this was the ring i'd lost and "look! the notches! i put those there!" nicki was laughing the entire time - the sort of laughter that actually says "god! okay! calm down!" nicki very gladly took the ring off and handed it to me, most likely out of fear that i would rip her finger off of her hand out of sheer excitement if she didn't. i thanked her profusely over and over... in retrospect, i'm sure my excitement was something of an overreaction more appropriate for that of a parent being reunited with a long lost child... but really, honestly, that's sort of the way i felt. corny, i know, but i just can't explain it any better than that. and seriously - what are the chances? it was a series of coincidences that led me to find my ring, but to me it felt like kismet.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
yesterday afternoon when i got back to my desk from break, my friend leah told me nicki had come by my desk looking for me. i sent her a message on our office instant messaging system and she said she'd be right over. she walked up to my desk chair from behind and warpped her arms around my neck in a hug. she's always been a hugger... "how sweet", i thought to myself, wondering if nicki just sensed that i sort of needed a hug after what had been a long, arduous, non-stop sort of morning in the office...
then she slowly extended her right arm in front of me and there it was: my ring, the same one, on her right thumb.
she'd found it on the floor in one of the stalls in the ladies' room there at work. same stall, actually.
i hadn't even noticed that it was missing...
i've decided to make nicki a sterling silver thumbring as thanks.
