I wear the locket with a string of tiny opals.

The locket opens for a wish written on a piece of paper and rolled up inside, and then you tie the whole thing on with a string. When the string breaks, the wish will come true. But when I first put it on, the string broke almost immediately! So the current red thread is a do-over string, for the wish that came before I was ready.

On a surf trip a few years ago, my beloved friend Julie was wearing a jade bracelet that had been put on her wrist as a baby. When the bracelet broke, it broke into three almost completely equal pieces. She was understandably sad; she said, I was supposed to wear this until I died, but then she was cheerful and never mentioned it again. But I couldn’t let go, and was mentioning this loss to my mother and she said, oh! But this is the luckiest thing of all! The bracelet breaks so you don’t. It takes the damage that was coming for you, it is an extra life.

My friend Julie and I now wear matching little jade rings, when my daughter is ready I’ll pass mine on to her.