The Teacher Appeared

At the beginning of summer, I brought three pairs of gemstones that I purchased at Honey Creek Gems in Davenport to a goldsmith at Revell Jewelry in Bettendorf. I had a pair of trillion amethysts, an oval pair of greenish blue sapphires and a pair of London blue heart shaped topaz. The idea that I had was to make a pair of earrings that I would wear at dog shows. Dove, born in February, has amethyst as her birthstone. The London blue topaz were for Prins, born in northern Sweden, who has a wonderful heart and is always a delightful companion. Celine, born in May, has emeralds. Emeralds are extremely expensive and usually treated with oil and/or glass to give a uniform appearance. Emeralds are soft and scratch easily. They are complicated. They were Cleopatra's favorite gemstone. There are so many analogies I can draw between Celine and emeralds. I never owned an emerald before in my life. I admired emeralds from a safe distance, never letting their allure lead me to make a regretful decision. When I worked in Iowa City, I often walked past the Hands Jewelry store display, always artfully curated. I always stopped and looked closely when the display featured emeralds. Beautiful, exotic, intoxicating, and seemingly unattainable emeralds. I could not envision a life of mine that would include emeralds.

When I visited Revell in June, I had a pair of natural extra fancy emeralds on layaway at Honey Creek, but they were disproportionately smaller than the other stones and I wanted to make a separate piece of jewelry with those stones. When I asked Jimmy to look at the emeralds from his collection, after I bought the topaz and amethyst in late winter, I could not resist their siren song. Jimmy insisted that I wouldn't find a matched pair from the limited selection. I looked at the two trays with the precious stones in tiny plastic individual cases, and I found two stones that could match in even a ring, let alone earrings. Jimmy was surprised and I smiled widely.

James at Revell listened to my story about my dogs and my vison for the earrings. I wanted a gold bezel setting, to hang straight down, with no articulation between the stones. Solid and connected, nothing that could catch on clothing or my long hair at an inopportune time. Everyone has a wardrobe malfunction at one time or another, but I didn't want to extend an invitation to the chaos that I like to keep at arm's length. James looked at the sapphires that I would substitute for the emeralds. He shook his head and said, "I have something better." He went to the vault of the store and emerged a few minutes later with three large trillion peridot stones. I am glad that I didn't call to him, "Anything but peridot," as he walked briskly away. I don't have anything specifically against peridot, but it is the August birthstone and my brother was born in August. I wanted to avoid reminders of people that I estranged from my life. Prins was born in November, just a few days before my mother, and I saw that as an opportunity to have cause for celebration in a month that I historically dreaded. So I had bit my tongue about peridot, figuring that maybe if James came back from the vault with peridot that I could work on moving past my distaste for August as well.

The peridot trillions looked brilliant with the amethyst trillions and the topaz hearts. James quoted the expected cost for the gold, the peridots and the labor to make the earrings. He said he would have a wax mold ready in about a month that I could view and approve to cast the gold. The earrings took much longer to finish than what was initially planned. One of the London blue topaz chipped during the setting process, and Revell ordered a replacement pair at their cost. Unfortunately, due to the large size of the topaz and the unusual heart shapes, it took several weeks for them to track down a new matched pair, and the new stones were a lighter Swiss blue, not dark London blue. I approved the change and received a text a week later that the earrings were complete. The morning that I planned to pick up the earrings, Friday October 15, I set about to put in my go-to diamond huggie earrings, and encountered a unique problem. I often go weeks to months without wearing earrings, so when I do wear them I often have to manipulate and partially re-pierce my ear lobes. My left earring went in easily. My right lobe piercing was nowhere to be found. I walked into the living room to ask Andy if he could find the hole. Andy is exceptionally queasy about blood and needles, so he immediately told me he would not re-pierce my ear. I told him that wasn't necessary, I just wanted him to see if he could find the piercing at all. Andy looked at my right ear in the kitchen, which was excellent lighting above the island, and announced that there was no hole to be found. I cursed, and realized that for the first time in my life I would have to go to seek assistance from a professional piercer. Since we planned to leave for Davenport later that day, I used Google to find businesses and picked the Quad City piercing store with the highest reviews, Zeitgeist Piercing. I called the store and talked to the owner, Dan. He told me that the pierced hole was probably still there and that I could come in without an appointment as long as it was before 3 pm, when his schedule got rather busy. We arrived at the store about an hour later. Andy stayed in the car, having no desire to witness the procedure or even be in the same building. He was already pale, no doubt thinking of the countless times over our nearly two decade relationship when I re-pierced my own ear, always resulting in copious amounts of cursing and blood.

I walked into the store and introduced myself to Dan, who looked briefly at my ear before having me follow him into one of the private rooms away from the shiny jewelry displays. I laid back on a comfortable recliner, similar to one that you would find in a well furnished private doctor's office. While Dan looked over both my ears, we talked about dogs and cats. He had a corgi that passed away in 2020 after being a holy terror for many years, and I recounted my similar experience with Penny the corgi. I told Dan about my Swedish Vallhunds and he was highly intrigued. He easily re-opened the hole in my right ear while talking about his Maine Coon cat, and then we walked to the jewelry displays in the front of the store.

Dan instructed me that I needed to keep earrings in my lobes at all times for at least two months for both holes to heal and remain open. He chided me for being so rough with myself and causing so much damage to my own ears by not taking care of the piercings in the first place. This was all new to me. I learned that my piercings were terribly done by the questionably licensed pediatrician of my youth. The holes were at a bad angle and Dan said, "I bet that when you wear post earrings, the posts rub painfully against your neck the entire time." I looked at him like he was a seer. I had never mentioned that truth to anyone. Earrings were always one of the few pieces of jewelry I could wear without triggering my PTSD. Over the past decade I significantly paired down my jewelry collection. I recycled the vast majority of my necklaces in 2015 for James at Revell to make a gold bangle bracelet with a sapphire cabochon. I love the bangle dearly, but it does still tend to catch on clothing and is really only practical in warm weather. James redesigned my wedding band and engagement rings in 2019, when I wanted to change the setting from white to yellow gold. I have a right hand ring that I designed that was then made by Laurie Sarah Jewelry in California. I have a white gold necklace that Laurie Sarah made in 2010, which was my 30th birthday present from Andy. Other than those few cherished pieces, I have a scattering of leftover earrings that are never worn. Dan now knew one of my secrets; even earrings cause me pain, not mental but actual physical pain.

That day, Dan taught me about flat back, push pin post earrings. I looked at the displays of tiny jewelry. These were itty bitty flashes that I had no idea existed. I asked Dan if traditional jewelers could make these earring. He told me that no, most wouldn't have the proper equipment, and I would need to seek out a company that specifically tailors to body jewelry. There were new terms to me, as I had always thought of "body jewelry," as anything but a person's ears. Dan went over piercing self care with me, and steered me away from the more expensive solid gold studs that had thoughtful designs of bees and lotus flowers. I am allergic to silver and thought I could never wear anything other than gold jewelry. I learned about implant grade titanium, and Dan assured me that in over 20 years of performing piercings he had never had a customer experience an adverse reaction to the titanium. I selected a small pair of faux opal titanium studs. Dan put the studs into the flat titanium backings, and reiterated that I needed to leave them in for at least eight weeks. If I wanted to buy different studs, then I need to do that a a piercing studio and have them put in by a professional piercer in the studio. This wasn't something that I should try at home and he again told me that I needed to be kind to myself and my body. I paid for the earrings and added a tip; my total was under fifty dollars.

I rejoined Andy in my 4Runner about a half hour after I had exited to go to the store. I gave him a short summary of my experience, leaving out the details of the re-piercing and the extensive lecture on self care. We drove to Revell and I picked up my new earrings as well as my right hand ring, which I had dropped off for two of the stones to be tightened. One of the stones had to reset in new prongs. I had absentmindedly somehow shorn off an entire prong during one of the trips that I took over the summer to show Dove and Prins. I didn't even know that a prong was missing. I knew that a stone was loose, and that was why I took the ring to be fixed. Nancy at Revell looked at me astonished that I could have shorn a 14 carat gold prong clear off the ring without remembering the incident. All I could say was, "I'm accident prone." I existed in a world where no matter the physical pain, I smiled and persisted. I thought that was how I had to exist, that it was my only option. Dan's lecture opened a Pandora's box in my psyche. Things did not need to be that way. I had a telehealth appointment with my therapist a few days later, and she steered the session to an in depth discussion of free will and choices. We've had this discussion many times over many years in many sessions, but now I could absorb in internalize the lesson. That evening, I told Andy the unabridged story of my experience with Dan and the ensuing discussion with my therapist earlier that day. It was such a simple lesson, directed at me countless times from multiple sources over the span of decades. Finally, I saw the meaning and wanted to fully embrace the message of self kindness, when it was presented to me in the package of self care. Andy smiled and repeated one of his own favorite mantras, "The teacher appeared."