Discovery Through Feeling

She is searching for me once more. She can see me in her mind’s eye, tucked away in that white envelope for safekeeping. The inspiration to look for me is sporadic; this is one of her latest episodes. Will the outcome of this search be successful? It’s anybody’s guess.

How did we meet, you ask? I was housed in a pawnshop in Gallop, New Mexico. She came in to look, she told the clerk, but I knew she was on a mission. I could tell she was the type who appreciated quality and beauty and was waiting for something special in the shop to speak to her. She shyly approached the showcase, taking in the display of jewelry designed and created by the Native Americans who relied on the shopkeeper to accept their goods in exchange for cash until they could repurchase them within a designated period. The price to recover me was too much for my artisan, so I was also on a mission to find a more suitable location for myself. I signaled her through my vibratory sense, which we objects can utilize at will to communicate with sentient beings. I trusted she could receive it, and she immediately responded. Smiling, she fixed her gaze on me and pointed. The clerk placed me on the counter. She picked me up and assessed my weight, marveling at the gemstones: carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, mother of pearl, and onyx set in my fourteen-karat gold body. The clerk explained the conspicuously hanging price tag, advising her to halve the number written upon it. The immediate cost reduction and my allure obliged her to pull out her American Express to make me her own: no box, no bag, just a clamp onto her wrist. I was happy with how she possessed me so quickly and thoroughly.

I became her go-to adornment. There was no subjecting me to the darkness and obscurity of the velvet-lined jewelry box drawer where she kept her wrist decor. The custom was for the box residents to wait there until deemed suitable for special occasions or outfits. I was her regular companion, resting on the dresser in full view of her as she slept next to her husband at night. I was the one she reached for, not to accessorize but to witness her daily movements, motives, and anticipations when she walked out the door. I accompanied her to work, meetings, conventions, vacations, luncheons, dinners, church, fundraisers, concerts, plays, graduations, weddings, and funerals. I absorbed whatever she experienced and felt her world, from the pleasant to the horrible. I knew her passion, love, gratitude, happiness, joy, hopefulness, fear, hate, greed, sorrow, guilt, shame, and discouragement as my own. I collected her emotions with loving awareness and neutrality, bearing witness to her truth: all she embraced and denied. I treasured the bond we had and trusted it would never end.

The constant travel and exposure to the rigors of daily living began affecting my body. I could tolerate both heat and cold. But the physical encounters took their toll when I was dropped or accidentally knocked against hard surfaces. The shocking confrontations came without warning, so there was no way to brace myself or get a grip on my delicate inlaid gemstones nestled up against each other. Over time, weaknesses in my form began to occur, causing minor damage followed by loss. The first separation from my body was a slim carnelian piece that was hardly detectable because it was set at the end of my mosaic pattern. She got over the loss and occasionally sought to find a repair for the deficit; overlooking the minor flaw, she continued to parade me on her wrist.

I’m not a jewelry authority, but I can only surmise that the teeny lost fragment negatively affected the relationship of all the parts making up my gem pattern. With synergy disrupted, the two central segments fell away at an unknown time and place. When their absence was discovered, she looked upon me with horror. I faced her like a six-year-old child, missing two front teeth, and seeing the uninhabited spaces where the most significant carnelian piece and neighboring onyx triangular chip once lay filled her with dread and discomfort. She was embarrassed by my infirmity, believing such an affliction made me unfit for further public display.

Hurt, I joined the other bracelets in their holding cell. I was not misplaced there but shamefully hidden away because of my unsightliness. Whenever she came to pull out one of my companions, I would see her longingly looking at me and wonder if she held the same affection and reminiscences as I did.

One day, the drawer containing me opened. I peeked out from its corner, wondering which bangle she would choose to dangle on her arm. Shock rose through me at her unexpected touch when she lifted me from my confinement; I felt expectation and hopefulness in her fingers. I grabbed onto that feeling, wishing for my restoration and future exhibition.

I found myself before a man seated at a booth displaying his hand-crafted jewelry items. He held me close to his eyes and inspected my afflicted body. After his examination, he confidently assured her that although he could not restore my mosaic inlays with stones, he could fill the missing spaces with resin to simulate the gemstones and where they had been. I could feel her heart leap with appreciation even though I no longer touched her. She wrote her contact information on an envelope he provided. He placed me inside and gave her his card, telling her it would take a few weeks for him to do the work. I didn't mind the darkness inside the number six- and three-quarter size envelope. I had become accustomed to the darkness. I did not mind the travel. I had done so much of it. I did not even care that I was entrusted to a stranger because there was a promise of revival for me.

The man from the booth’s workspace contained white plastic molds, metal bevels both open and closed, small plastic and silicone cups, sticks, droppers, clay, dyes, epoxy resins, and a UV light. Its orderliness assured me that I would be well taken care of. His first approach was to create mosaic segments for insertion into the empty spaces, which challenged his ability to size in millimeters. I sat before him under the bright light, watching his brow furrow and beads of sweat form through many attempts. He would leave me sometimes for hours and periodically for days to return with renewed anticipation that he would succeed. After two weeks, he gave up on such an exacting method and attempted to pour a customized carnelian-colored resin directly into my staring holes. It did not react well with my natural mineral makeup. The resin would not cure aesthetically or adequately on its own or with the help of a UV light. I read the failure on his face and could feel the disappointment he exhibited and had to convey to her. I listened as he called to tell her she could pick me up, unfortunately unrestored.

When she saw me again, I was in worse shape than before. The red residue of the pored resin adhered to my golden body, which the man could not remove or did not do out of exasperation. My façade gave a new impression. The resin debris made it appear that the missing teeth had been recently knocked out by an angry opponent, which the man had become to me in his workshop. With a kind hand, she placed me back in the envelope that had transported me for rehabilitation. I was so discouraged inside the paper tomb. Mindlessly, she removed me from the envelope and positioned me unprotected in the top drawer of her computer desk among the stapler, staples, hole puncher, dry eraser, markers, empty cartridges, magnets, tape measures, key rings, campaign buttons, USB drives, old eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, stale gum, electronic cleaning cloths, and various other items, some useful, some beyond their usefulness, and some waiting to be gotten around to.

There I remained, waiting for another search and possible solution to come.

She thought of a solution a year ago but could not find me when she searched, expecting me to be encased in white paper in the drawer. As she moved things about, I would feel the jostling of objects, their vibrations, clicks, scrapes, clinks, and rustlings. I’d hear the top drawer close, the middle drawer open, and the same rustling and rearrangement repeating on that tier, then down to the bottom drawer and repeat. I'd hear her move to the bedroom to riffle through more drawers. She was the model of insanity, doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. After one of her hunts, I overheard her tell her daughter that I either grew legs and ran away or there was a gremlin that hung about to move things around for fun. It brought her some sense of release to take the onus off her for absent-mindedness or malposition.

Call it coincidence, call it uncanny, call it lucky. A week ago, she read about a writing challenge to describe the experience of misplaced objects. She decided to meet that challenge and had the idea to use me as the subject, but she first had to find me. She began her search once more. This time, she was calm and focused; she let go of the preconceived image of the envelope in her mind. She opened the top drawer; I had been waiting there all along, overlooked due to a false notion from the past she carried forward into the present to hinder her discovery. That false image had blocked all possibility of her finding me. I began calling, vibrating as I did when we met one another years ago. She heard. She reached into the back compartment of the drawer, and without looking, she placed her hand on me, sans envelope. She gasped!