Today’s earrings came from my mother. She received them as a gift from a friend who’d taken a trip to Fiji. My mother wore them a few times, but they’re not her style.

My mother, her friend, and I have spent time together, going to Mackinac Island, eating meals together, watching fireworks from a deck on Lake Michigan. So, a few years after my mother received these earrings, she gave them to me.

I haven’t worn them since the pandemic started in 2020. They aren’t wear-with-a-pair-of-blue-jeans-and-a-T-shirt earrings. But today I think I pulled it off. I wore a navy-blue turtleneck, a pale blue sweater and blue jeans. And when I left the house in the afternoon rain, I wore a dark-blue rain jacket with a sophisticated yet subtle tone-on-tone print. The earrings and rain jacket could be soulmates. (If you’re wondering, Anna Wintour never worries when I talk fashion.)

These earrings remind me of a ride in the backseat of a rented midsized sedan from Kohler, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee in July 2010.

I sat in the middle of the backseat because it was my turn to sit in the middle. And because no one cared about my moderate claustrophobia.

As I slid into the center of the seat, I remembered a surgeon’s advice before I had an MRI: “Close your eyes before you enter the tube and don’t open them.”

My mother drove out of the parking lot. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. I asked my sister-in-law, who sat to my right, to tell me about her scuba diving trip to Bali.

I asked why she wanted to learn to scuba dive. She has lived in Arizona all her life.

I asked her how she learned. Pools were involved.

I asked her about the dangers. There’s a lot that can go wrong on a dive.

I asked her about the world under the waves.

For fifty miles, a blue-green ocean teaming with exotic fish, coral reefs, and scuba divers screened on my eyelids. For every question I asked, she wove a narrative taking me out of the middle of that backseat. I kept my eyes closed.

These earrings remind me of Fiji, my mother, and her friend.

These earrings remind me of Bali, my sister-in-law, and fifty miles of scuba diving adventures.

I know Fiji is not Bali. My sister-in-law hasn’t met my mother’s friend. These earrings didn’t exist in July 2010.

Doesn’t matter. Neurons forge our networks of memories.

Every time I wear these earrings, I return to my happy place in the waters of Bali among fish and reefs and divers—a place I’ve never been.

I bought these earrings in Tucson, Arizona, in 2003. I went with my husband and sons to visit my mother and stepdad in Phoenix and my father and siblings in Tucson.

These earrings have traveled to Rhode Island, Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Hawaii, and Canada. These are hockey earrings. They’ve seen my youngest son play lots of hockey games in many cities. I have a rule about jewelry when I travel—only one pair of earrings and one necklace. These are the earrings that almost always made the cut.

I’ve worn these earrings more than any other pair of earrings I own, so maybe that makes them my favorite pair. As my mother would say, “You can wear them with blue jeans or an evening dress.”

I wore this pair to Winnipeg, Canada, to a hockey tournament. On Saturday morning, I was waiting in the car for my husband to come out of the hotel, so we could head to the rink.

After he got in the car, he said, “Do you feel naked?”

“What?” I hadn’t forgot to put on my pants. (This was long before COVID-19 and pants-less Zoom meetings and endless jokes about people forgetting to wear pants.)

He laughed and asked again, “Do you feel naked?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He extended a closed fist toward me then opened his fingers. Nestled on his palm were my teardrop earrings.

“I thought you might want these, so you didn’t feel naked,” he said.

“Yes, thanks.” I lifted my earrings off his palm and leaned over to kiss him before dressing my bare earlobes.

He had remembered that I had once said I felt naked if I forgot to wear earrings when I left the house.

I’ve never forgotten that he remembered.

I almost didn’t write today’s post about earrings. I received my COVID-19 booster yesterday evening at 5:15, and today I had aches, low-grade fevers, and major fatigue. Last March when I had my second shot, I was so tired for two days that even getting out of bed to go to the bathroom was exhausting. Today was better than last time, but I still needed four substantial naps. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have a serious case of COVID.

I chose today’s earrings this morning but didn’t put them on until 6:15 this evening when I started writing this blog. I can’t wear earrings when I sleep.

Today’s pair are Black Hills Gold, a pink-colored rose encircled by golden leaves. I bought them around 1990 with birthday money my father gave me. Every year he’d send me birthday money, and I’d buy something for myself. I couldn’t tell you what else I bought over the years, but I remember thanking him for these earrings.

My father passed away in September 2016 from a heart attack, but dementia had begun to stalk him. If he were alive, he’d be in a nursing home and probably isolated by surges of COVID.

Yesterday on my way to the vaccine clinic, I listened to a story on public radio about sailors who are stuck on cargo ships that can’t get into port. And when they finally do, the sailors aren’t given shore leave because they aren’t vaccinated. The nightly news reports on hundreds of ships stalled in the ocean, but I haven’t heard them talk about the sailors on the ships.

The public radio journalist interviewed a maritime chaplain who comforts crew members stranded on ships. These people can’t see their families, can’t get off a ship to wire money home, can’t walk down a sidewalk. I’m embarrassed to say, I never thought about the people on those ships. One sailor’s wife is divorcing him because she hasn’t seen him in so long. These sailors don’t have the freedom to get off the ship, and they don’t know when they’re going home. I remembered a history lesson about the impressment of American sailors being one of the causes of the War of 1812. I wonder how little a sailor’s life at sea has changed over the last few hundred years.

When I arrived home, I told my husband, “I can’t believe I never thought about the people on those ships. How could I not think about them?” The focus is always on the cargo.

Today was a difficult day. Feeling lousy makes me feel blue, and I spent the day—when I was awake—close to tears.

But . . .

I’m thankful for my vaccines.

I’m thankful I remember the earrings I bought with birthday money from my father.

I’m thankful public radio aired a story about sailors stuck on ships.

I’m thankful that my biggest worry about COVID is being laid low by a vaccine.