Today’s earrings are happy earrings. They’re also the second pair I put on this morning.

The first pair were sad. Their hooks are too small, so the earring in my right ear couldn’t dangle because the hook was squashed against my earlobe. I removed the earrings, which are nice enough, but I won’t wear them again. I bought them, so I won’t feel guilty deserting them.

The hole in my right ear is almost two millimeters higher than the hole in my left ear. And, it’s not because my right ear is higher than my left ear. The clerk in the store where I had my ears pierced miscalculated.

I thought about having my right ear pierced again to lower the hole, so earrings that are meant to dangle, can dangle. I was told to let the old hole close up first to avoid a potential tear between the old and new holes. That would’ve taken months, so I’ve kept my uneven hole. Instead, I’ve learned not to buy earrings with small hooks.

My friend Sandi bought these happy silver and green earrings for me on one of her cruises. Before today I’d only worn them a couple of times because I had lukewarm feelings about them. But this morning when I put them on as a second choice and looked in the mirror, a heatwave of happiness blew over me. How did I not love these earrings from the start? They bounce and swirl. They catch light and throw it back through the air. They’re sassy and amusing. They’re an incarnation of my friend Sandi.

The first time I met Sandi’s son, he said, “I’m surprised you and my mom are such good friends because of your age difference.”

“Yeah, your mom’s a little young for me, but I overlook that,” I said.

When he stopped laughing, he said, “Touché.”

Sandi was seventeen years older than me, but in numbers only. Her son knew exactly what I meant.

Today’s earrings are happy and young at heart, just like Sandi was. If not for my “Thirty Days of Earrings” blogging, I might not have ever worn them again.

But, today these earrings danced beneath my ears, and I felt young at heart.

I will wear them again, and often.

[Click here to hear Frank Sinatra sing “Young at Heart.”]

After wandering around a gift store several times, looking for a gift for friend, I bought these earrings. For myself. And nothing for the friend.

It’s a gift store I like, and I’d had good luck finding gifts for family and friends before, but this time, after circling the store several times, I couldn’t find the right gift.

I bought these earrings because I knew I’d feel guilty if I left without buying anything. I liked these earrings to a point. And that point ended at the tiny silver circles at what are now the bottoms of the earrings.

The circles at the bottom of these earrings aren’t decorative. Jingly stuff hung from it. I decided to buy the earrings and remove the superfluous jingly stuff when I got home.

Simple is better. Sophia Loren’s character in the romantic comedy Houseboat proves this when she removes two strings of hideous purple flowers from an otherwise gorgeous gold gown.

I gleefully removed the jingly stuff from my new earrings. A pair of Peruvian green stones wrapped in delicate silver wire remained. They’re not as pretty as the gold gown, but then I’ve never been Sophia Loren.

And I did find a gift for my friend, but at a different store.

[For another story about earrings I bought out of guilt read: Day 10–Butterfly Earrings.]

The hospital visits began with an afternoon phone call from Sandi’s son, who lives on the West Coast. Sandi had gone to the hospital in the morning. Tests run by the emergency room doctor revealed kidney stones and she was having a rough time. He couldn’t reach his sister who was out in the countryside where cell reception was spotty. Could I go to the hospital?

Sure.

Sandi had kidney stones, but the ER doctor also found a mass on her kidney. A kidney doctor said he needed to take care of the kidney stones in her good kidney before he could remove her cancerous kidney.

After her kidney stone problem was eradicated, her cancerous kidney was removed.

Not long after, a routine colonoscopy revealed a large tumor in her colon. A doctor removed the tumor, which she said looked benign, and sent it for testing. Cancer.

We hoped the cancer hadn’t spread, but a body scan revealed cancer in Sandi’s liver.

Over the next couple of years, I lost track of my visits to see Sandi when she would be in the hospital.

On one visit, I stopped by the hospital’s gift shop before I left. Hospitals have the best gift shops. I walked through the shop, letting time stand still. I looked at the beautiful gifts for sale, gifts for women and men and children and newborns. Scarves, purses, jewelry, crystal figurines, frames, vases, toys, books, stationery, slippers, clothing—a smattering of everything.

Before leaving the shop, I bought a cup of coffee and a cookie. I scrutinized a circular rack of earrings on the countertop. A pair of earrings caught my eye. I bought them, knowing they would remind me of Sandi and my trips to the hospital to see her.

By the time I bought these earrings, the cancer had already shown up in Sandi’s colon and liver. Her family and friends all hoped for a cure, but I wondered if each new procedure or treatment designed to beat back the spreading and recurring cancer had scraped away their hope like it did mine.

I wore these earrings while Sandi was still alive. She liked them. Although, they were a bit subdued for her taste.

Sandi rarely wore earrings, except when she went on a cruise. Then she wore long dangling earrings with lots of glittering crystals and colorful beads. She called them her “slutties,” and she wore them with formal evening attire to dinners on cruises. She bought a new pair for every cruise. “Look at the new slutties I bought for my cruise,” she’d beam. “It’s not easy being eye candy, you know.”

I wore these earrings after Sandi died. I wondered if she’d chosen a pair of her slutties to be buried in. I don’t remember which earrings I wore to her funeral in September 2018.

One morning in November 2018, almost three months after Sandi died, I wore these earrings to work. After I returned home, I discovered I had one naked ear. I hadn’t worn the rubber backs. The wire hooks were so long, I thought they couldn’t fall out.

You’d think I’d learn. [Read: Thirty Days of Earrings.] I was devastated. I tried to find the earring when I went back to work. I asked coworkers. I checked the lost and found. It was gone. My earring was single.

I began a quest to find another pair. I bought these earrings in 2017, so in 2018, they were last year’s design made by the company Silver Forest. For years I’d seen their earrings displayed in many gift shops. So, whenever I entered a gift shop in Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan, I checked to see if they carried Silver Forest earrings. I often found their displays, but I never found the same pair of earrings.

Then it occurred to me to look up the company on the internet. Turns out they will repair a broken earring or replace a lost earring if they still have the design elements. But I had to send the remaining earring back to them so they could match the new one to it. For sentimental reasons I was afraid of losing the remaining earring.

Already in the spirit of internet searching, I turned to Amazon. I searched through almost one hundred pairs of Silver Forest earrings, but I found them. Now I have three identical earrings. I don’t know which one is the original mate of the lost earring.

When I told this story to someone, they asked me if I still had the original earring. “Of course,” I said. “What if I’d thrown it out then found the other one?” I know a woman who lost an earring but refused to throw the other one away. Months later, in the spring after the snow and ice melted in her driveway, she found her lost earring. And it was unscathed.

I like to think Sandi has my lost earring in heaven with her, and when I see her someday, she will hold out her palm with my earring and say, “Did you lose something?” before she even says hello.

And I will respond, “How the heck did you get that?”

She will answer with one of her favorite retorts, “Let me splain it to you, Lucy. It doesn’t matter how long the hooks are on a pair of earrings—always wear the rubber backings.”

I didn’t take the Caribbean cruise; Sandi, my best friend, did. She bought these abalone shell earrings for me as a gift.

When the rectangles sway, iridescent, pale-green splotches catch light and pulsate across the surface of the earrings, giving the impression they light up from within.

I met Sandi, a paralegal, at a law office where I had taken a summer job. I had dreams of switching careers and becoming a paralegal. Eventually, I decided against the career change, but my friendship with Sandi lasted until she passed away fourteen years later.

The lawyer, who gave me a tour of the office on my first day, introduced me to Sandi, and told her I taught English. Her first words to me were, “I might as well tell you right now, I don’t understand that possessive apostrophe stuff.”

My first words to her were, “I struggle with affect and effect and avoid using either word. And I have to look up how to use lay or lie every time.”

We both laughed. My first thoughts were “I like this person, and we’re going to be good friends.”

There was so much coded in our first exchange of words: We wouldn’t lead with our egos; we’d help each other when needed; humor would prevail. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

These earrings symbolize Sandi’s character. She pulsated kindness and humor and strength, which lit up from inside her.