Thoughts on a pair of earrings

I had the best pair of small blue studs set in a ring of silver. Blue topaz, to be specific, good for tennis and running and good for both every-day wear and dressing up.

They came from Folklorica, a store with beautiful things in Newton where Diane took me. I got a necklace to match.

When I lost one earring on the tennis court, we went back and asked if the designer could make a match. The answer was yes, and in no time I was whole again. This time I got the kind of plastic earring backs that keep them from falling out.

Then the whole pair fell through the cracks in my house. My mother used to say, "A girl can never have too many earrings." I definitely have plenty. I decided to do without.

But I had an idea: The second of my back-to-back ECP sessions last week was at 11 a.m. I asked Diane if she could go with me to Folklorica beforehand. "I woke up in the middle of the night and had a craving to go to Folklorica," I said.

She said sure and proposed that we have breakfast first at the 50s-themed Johnny's Luncheonette. As we walked to Folklorica, she asked, "Did you lose a blue earring again?" I confessed that I had lost both.

They didn't have those earrings, but they had something better!

Little blue hoops with one end that clicks easily into the other. Same stone, same idea. Perfect for someone like me who has trouble connecting one end of a hoop to the other when you have to connect a wire with a small loop behind your ear. (Another sign of older age?)

"The click is so satisfying," the saleswoman said when I tried them on.

When I wore them to New York this weekend, I said to Tami, "I never want to take them off."

"Why would you?" she asked.

I had brought a dangly pair to wear out to dinner, but the new ones morphed from good for a train ride to good for going out.

My one regret about the endoscopy today is that I figured I should remove the earrings. I put them in a special safe place where I can't possibly lose them.

My mother was a jewelry designer, and I am my mother's daughter.

We daughters think about this all the time – "I'm turning into my mother" – and at certain times like this it jumps out at us.

Lucky to have such a problem.