The Dreamy Moon That Followed Me

In the early part of the 1970s, I bought a pendant from a shop in Madison, Wisconsin. The shop was one of those patchouli-scented hippie places that sold beads and trinkets and gauzy embroidered blouses from India and probably pipes and rolling papers too. It was somewhere along the perimeter of the Capitol square, an area where a festive farmers’ market was held on Saturday mornings, and rallies and protests are staged to this day.

 I seldom had any money back then, but occasionally I liked to wander around with my good friend Cyd and browse in the stores, and on this particular day I indulged myself in a purchase. There were many earrings and necklaces in the showcase from which to choose, but I selected an oval-shaped silver pendant flecked with turquoise with an inlaid image of a moon and a star. It was whimsical and star-gazey, not a very sophisticated choice, but I was twenty-something then, and I liked it. (And if, as someone pointed out to me years later, it vaguely resembled the crescent moon and star that symbolized Islam, well, believe me, that never would have entered my mind.)

The pendant was adornment for a gypsy soul, and I wore it everywhere, for years.  It accompanied me to places like Chicago and Washington, D.C., two cross-country trips, and finally from New York to California…all the points I passed through in between, and all the meanderings of the decades that ensued. I wore that necklace while riding on Greyhound buses, sitting in motley automobiles, and walking on city streets and dusty mountain roads. That's me above, somewhere deep in the 1970s, wearing it in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. And then, somewhere along the line, I didn't seem to have it anymore, figured it was lost, and forgot about it entirely, because, after all, who cares?

But yesterday I unexpectedly came upon it, unchained, at the bottom of a tiny woven basket filled with safety pins, buttons, earrings without partners, and other homeless baubles. It was tarnished like an old coin but familiar as an old friend. Monte shined it up with bike chrome polish, and I put it on a silver chain and wore it throughout the day.In my youthful vanity I suppose I liked the way the silver glinted against my then-dewy, unmarred skin…that region between neck and bosom now blotched by years of sun. And I must have liked the fanciful, carefree idea of a moon with a face, its eyes closed in dreamy sleep, and a star always shining...all of which becomes a little silly on a woman of sixty.

But it’s always fun to find these artifacts of one’s life, the little proofs of memories that have begun to seem as questionable as dreams.

So I gaily wore the necklace on a walk up the canyon in the afternoon, and I was wearing it still while I sat on the couch reading from my iPad as evening approached. (Reading from my iPad? Who could have even imagined such a thing back when I first bought that pendant?) And as I was checking around some news sites, I noticed that President Obama (President...Obama?) was going to be making an announcement from the White House that very night, mysterious and unusual. Tweets began to be tweeted (tweets?), like a rainstorm building up, first an intermittent drop, then a more regular pitter-patter, gradually turning into a torrential rain.

Even before the President spoke, the word was out that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. News pundits were babbling and blathering to fill in the space until the President arrived, conjecturing as to circumstances, speculating about what the Al-Qaeda snake would do with its head cut off, seeking reaction and analysis, trying to find or invent meaning. Out of curiosity, I stole a look at Facebook, where a half a dozen middle school kids ––yes, this is the population from which I draw many of my Facebook friends...a vestige from my teaching years–– had already announced bin Laden’s death as their status, followed by a flurry of thumbs-ups. Then came the President’s actual announcement. (Oh, so it turns out bin Laden was living not in a cave in Afghanistan, but a mansion in Pakistan…golly…is anyone surprised?) So, a cheer emanates and a chapter has closed, but it remains to be seen what changes.

I reached down and clutched my little pendant with its funny, indifferent moon, and I thought about how strange it is, the forms that evil has assumed in the decades since I bought this thing.

But also, I thought how wondrous and incongruous and purely amazing are the technologies, the inventions, the means of communication, the immediacy of our connection with one another, the enormity of our possibility if we can just get ourselves on track. Unlikely things happen. And sometimes they are good. Almost miraculous.

Well, I’ll wear a different necklace today, something less nostalgic, more age-appropriate. But I like knowing I still have this thing, mute witness to so many stories...so many unforeseeable and downright impossible developments.And a fine heirloom for my daughter. (What do you think, Miranda?)