A few weeks ago I went to a birthday party where you were supposed to dress like you did in high school. I decided to go with jam band nineties Rob, which consisted of a flannel shirt with a t-shirt underneath, loose fitting khakis, Birkenstocks, and the piece de resistance, a hemp necklace. Yeah, I had one of those. It had a colorful cylindrical bead in the middle which most likely featured a mushroom like they all did. I went down to the head shops of St. Marks to see what I could scare up. I found one hemp necklace but it had puka shells and that wasn’t what I was going for. I was able to find something approximating a hemp necklace, though. It’s a necklace with this weird turtle medallion thing. It made my outfit work.

But also, I haven’t stopped wearing it. I’m wearing it right now.

I’ve always liked accessories, I guess. Rings, bracelets, necklaces. I even had an earring for a few years. In 2018, I’m told that even my watch – as it is not of the Apple variety – is basically a forty year old’s bracelet.

When I was a kid, I thought Ricky Schroeder on Silver Spoons was the epitome of cool. He and his Dad were rich from owning a toy company. They had a miniature train that you could ride in their mansion. It doesn’t get cooler than that. In one episode the Ricker (Ricky’s self applied nickname) was wearing a ring on his middle finger. If Ricky had one, I had to have one.

Before we continue, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a more misguided fashion faux pas. I also thought Chachi from Happy Days was cool. In a few episodes, he wore a bandana tied around his thigh. So, clearly, I had to get the look. I actually left the house wearing that. Through my friends I’ve become familiar with parents’ resignation over their children’s clothing choices. My best friend’s older sister was not so forgiving. “Robby, please take that off or at least tie it closer to your knee.” I refused.

I bought my first ring in Toronto. It was the most cosmopolitan city close to Rochester and we would go there on vacations. I loved it there. Walking along the water front with my parents, I found a stand with someone selling rings. I bought one with my own money. It was silver and it had a small knot in it. It was the coolest thing ever.

In the seventh grade, everyone was wearing crystals around their necks. I bough quite a few of those. In high school, it was Jordan Catalano who wore a silver ring and a choker. I couldn’t quite pull that off but still, I admired the technique.

This was something that my mother and I could bond over. My father and I had soccer. My mother and I had rings and necklaces and, well, earrings.

We got our ears pierced together when I was a sophomore in college. Despite the fact that that is more seventh grade besties than a mother and nineteen year old son thing to do, it was pretty cool. We were in Eastview Mall and we just said what the hell. My mom got a second hole in her lobe and I got my upper cartilage pierced. I kept it until my first job. I wish that I had kept it, especially since I would end up working as a web developer. One earring in an ear would have been nothing. (There’s an employee at my current job who has the word FUCK tattooed on one of her hands, and a topless woman on the other.)

It’s fitting that I went to St. Mark’s to find the turtle necklace. St. Marks was a favorite for my parents and me. They would stay with a friend a block away from St. Marks when they would visit New York. The first time I came here with them, we wandered up and down St. Marks and I loved it. It was so vibrant. (It was also 1990, so, I’m sure there was a lot of stuff I was either to young to notice or my parents were shielding me from.) I went into the comic book shop and bought the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book. And this was the year when all of my friends were wearing crystals, so, I bought a few but these were cooler because they were from New York.

It was on one of their visits, when I had been living here for a number of years, that my mother told me that she had to have open heart surgery. She had always had mitral valve prolapse but she had reached a point where it needed to be taken care of. In retrospect, this was the real beginning of the end of life as I knew it with my parents. And even though I was really scared for her, I couldn’t see that then.

She sprung the news on me during brunch after a manic search for just the right place to go. Later that day, after the shock wore off, we were walking through the village and saw these rings for sale. They were all different colors, they looked like they were made of glass. I picked a silver one, my mother picked a teal one. We were never explicit in our superstitions but they were there. So, we never mentioned out loud that this was a sort of a mutual good luck charm kind of thing, we both sort of knew it. And we wore them for the rest of the trip. And I kept wearing mine after they left. And I think she kept wearing hers.

A month or two later, on the day before my mother’s surgery, I dropped my ring and it shattered on the floor of my apartment. This was also around the same time that June Carter Cash had died due to complications from heart valve replacement surgery. This was bad juju. I glued the ring back together, almost like a prayer for my mother. I didn’t even try to put it back on when the glue dried so it wouldn’t break all over again.

Her surgery went fine.

I told her about that a few weeks into her recovery. “You know the ring that we got in New York? Mine shattered but I glued it back together.” She gave me sort of a shocked expression. She knew the symbolism of that ring breaking. “I’m glad you did,” she said.