Things lost and found

The small diamond and sapphire pendant linked with the coral cross by famed Zuni silversmith, Horace Iule, has a story. My parents gave me the diamond set as a ring when I was young, either in college, or as early as high school. I continued to wear the ring for several years, even though I was not and am not a diamond person. The ring left my possession temporarily in 1971 on a trip home to northwest Houston when I was in graduate school at Southern Methodist University. At that time I-45 was more a 4-lane divided highway. It was nighttime, and my two guest passengers and I stopped in the inky black to relieve ourselves in the ditch bordering a solid pine and hardwood forest on the west side of the highway. I returned to the passenger side of the car and began brushing crumbs from the seat, residue of the crackers we had been eating.

Cold weather, cold hands, and “Damn!”, the ring flew off my finger into the grass. Pitch dark, no flashlight, what to do. I found a substantial stick in the grass and planted it in the ground, fully intending to search for it on my return on Sunday. Remember, 4-lane divided highway. You’ve guessed the rest. I did find the ring on Sunday. I don’t remember when I had the diamond made into a pendant for my mother. Many years later I bought the sapphire stone—my mother and I both have September birthdays—and had it made into a pendant. She wore them both. At her death in 2007. I got the pendants back. Recently I had them reset. The organic pendant made up of turquoise and opal grew out of a turquoise pendant I had bought for the stone and an opal ring I recycled. Peas in a pod.