Lucky Jewelry and the Things We Reach For

It is Monday morning, the morning before the first day of my cardiology fellowship, and the dish on the dresser holds the same pieces it has held all spring. The chain at my collarbone, the small charm at the base of the chain, the ring on the third finger of my right hand. I have been looking at these three pieces for a longer stretch than I usually look at jewelry in the morning, which is to say I have been treating them with the kind of attention a wearer treats her pieces only on the mornings when she is asking them to come to work with her in a specific way.

Tomorrow I will walk into a new hospital with the same chain on my collarbone that walked me out of the old one three weeks ago. The chain has not made any decisions in the last three weeks. The chain has not done anything to earn the trip across the country, the few boxes still unpacked in the kitchen, the small dish on the dresser that the chain has been sleeping in every night. The chain has just been there, in the way pieces of jewelry are there, on the body during the days when the days have been doing the work.

This is, I have come to think, the principle behind every lucky piece of jewelry that has ever been worn into a room where something was about to happen: the piece does not do the work, the wearer does, and the piece accumulates the credit because it is the visible part of the wearer's relationship to her own preparation. The bag that won the Knicks the NBA Finals last week worked the same way. The bag did not win the games; the bag was the visible part of a wearer's relationship to a city's relationship to a basketball team that finally, after fifty-three years, did the work it had been built to do.

The Public Catalog

The city of New York keeps a public catalog of superstitions about the things it loves, and the Knicks have one of the largest catalogs of any team in any sport, because the city loves them too much and has been disappointed by them too often. There is the man who has sat in the same courtside seat for forty years in clothing chosen the morning of each game with the attention a high priest gives to vestments. There is the bag, which has been covered in another post. There are the seven shirts that I know of which various fans have refused to wash through the Finals, and the small bottle of water from a specific deli on a specific corner that a player drank from before each home game during the playoffs.

All of these objects, the seat and the clothing and the bag and the bottle and the shirts, have been credited at one point or another with making the Knicks win games, although the Knicks themselves are obviously the ones who have made the Knicks win games. The objects have been there during the wins, and the city has remembered which objects were there, and the city has agreed to keep believing that the objects are part of the winning.

This is the public version of the practice, and it is loud. It happens in places like Madison Square Garden and on television and in the comments section of Instagram posts. The objects are public, the city argues about them, and the bag has its own Instagram tag.

The Private Catalog

The private version of the practice, the one each wearer keeps for herself, is quieter. It happens in the small fifteen minutes of a Monday morning when the wearer is choosing what to put on for a day that has been on her calendar for months, in the small space at the dish on the dresser, with three or four small pieces that have been there for a longer stretch of time than most jewelry stays anywhere.

The wearer has her own version of the catalog: the chain at the collarbone she wore the day she took the licensing exam, the ring on her third finger she put on the morning she signed the lease for the new apartment, the small charm at the base of the chain that has been there since before the move and that she has come, by virtue of being unable to articulate why, to associate with the kind of quiet she needs to do the work she is about to do.

None of these pieces have ever actually done anything. The wearer has done everything: the licensing exam, the lease, the move across the country, the country that did not move and the wearer who moved across it anyway. The pieces have just been there, on the body, during the doing.

What the pieces have done, by virtue of being on the body during the doing, is collect the residue of the doing. The chain has the residue of the licensing exam, the ring has the residue of the lease, the charm has the residue of the move, and the wearer, on a Monday morning before a Tuesday that has been on her calendar for months, reaches for the pieces that have the right residue for the day she is about to enter.

This is the private catalog. It does not get its own Instagram tag, it does not get covered in another post, and it is the wearer alone, in her own apartment, in her own small fifteen minutes of choosing, with her own three or four pieces, doing the small private version of the public ritual that the city has been doing all spring.

What the Wearer Reaches For

What the wearer reaches for on the mornings that matter is the piece that has been with her for the kinds of mornings that came before this one. The piece does not need to have been with her for a long time. The bag was new, only two months old when it became the most discussed accessory in American sports, and the principle still held. The piece needs to have been with her for the right moments, which is a different criterion than being with her for a long time.

The wearer, when she has had several occasions to test the principle, knows which pieces have the right residue for which kinds of occasions. The chain is for the days when the work is going to be uphill and the wearer wants to feel the small weight of something on the throat that has been at the throat through other uphill days. The ring belongs to the meetings that involve other people's attention, because the ring is on a finger that the wearer can see when she gestures, and the wearer who can see her ring is the wearer who can remember that she is herself. The charm comes out for the days when the wearer is alone with the work, when there is no audience and no one is watching, and the work is going to be done by the wearer alone, with the small private thing she chose to have on her body during the doing.

Pieces in the 925 Sterling Silver Collection were designed for this kind of accumulation. The wearer is meant to wear them often enough that they pass the threshold from being jewelry into being touchstones, and the threshold is crossed not by the cost of the piece but by the number of mornings the piece has been on the body before the morning that matters. The brand's longer reading on what makes a piece look expensive has been making this argument under a different name for two years.

This is, in the end, what every Glass Balloon post has been writing about under one heading or another. The piece becomes itself because the wearer has decided to be in a relationship with it. The lucky piece is just the piece in a relationship that has been tested enough times for both the piece and the wearer to know it is the relationship they are in. The wearer who has paid attention to what her jewelry has been saying to her is the wearer who has accumulated a catalog of pieces ready for the days that ask for them.

It is Monday morning, and the dish on the dresser holds the chain, the charm, and the ring. Tomorrow is the first day of cardiology fellowship. I will not need to choose, because the choice has already been made, by the chain, the charm, and the ring agreeing, over the course of the spring, that they are the pieces that will come with me to the new hospital. They will be on the body in the morning, the way they have been on the body every morning since March. The body will walk into the hospital. The work that has been on the calendar for months will begin. The pieces will be there for it; the wearer will do the work.