When I went off to college….

Shortly after my 18^th birthday, I went off to college for the first time. Like all freshman, I was facing an unknown. I was not only leaving the nest, I was leaving the only lifestyle I had ever known that I had artistically created for myself. My best friend and preferred “big Sister”, once again conjured a spell to remedy that imbalance. You may have heard of “friendship rings” or “friendship bracelets”, well, we are just about everything but cliché…

Without hesitation, she reached up to her ear lobe and unfastened one of her intricately fashioned serpent hoops that were so expressly her! She pressed it into my palm and folded my fingers around it tightly; assuring me of the energy, we now shared. I wore that single earring, sometimes with a different one on my right side, but mostly by itself for my entire first year! I wish I had a nickel for every time someone stopped me to say, “I think you lost an earring”. I always thanked them for their taking notice and replied, “Nope, nothing lost, one is all I need”.

A few years later on my wedding day, there was Beth, my Matron of Honor, wearing the single serpent earring from the pair we shared. She expressed the ultimate display of support, as I was about to embark on a new life. Decades later, I returned the earring so she would once again have the pair. Closer than ever, that jewelry served as a symbolic gesture of love and sharing that was undoubtedly more profound than any level of friendship could compare – just like “magic”!