Nancy O’Brien Dorr

Have you ever wondered about degrees of separation?  Like, does a butterfly in Japan flapping its wings, cause a gentle breeze at 42nd and Broadway in New York?  How about this story:

In the mid ‘70s, I bought a Native American necklace at Saks Fifth Avenue for my mother’s birthday.  She loved jewelry, especially jewelry she could wear with her beautiful sterling silver earrings when vacationing in the West.   She loved the necklace!  When my youngest sister Kate was to be married in 1981 in Lincoln, NE, another sister asked mother if she could wear it to the wedding.  Mother acquiesced, with trepidation.  No one told me this.  Several years later, Mother asked me if there might be another necklace like the one I gave her.  I thought this was a strange question, but thought nothing more.

Meanwhile, the now married sister had moved to Chicago, where her husband completed his medical internship.  Shortly before they moved to Utah in 1985, my sister and husband were visiting the apartment of a fellow medical student.  After exiting the restroom adjacent to the master bedroom, Kate saw a wall covered in her host’s jewelry collection.  Liking jewelry runs in the family, so Kate found herself examining the collection.  Imagine her surprise when she discovered the necklace, identical to the one I had given our mother, and the one worn to her wedding by another sister. 

When Kate asked her hostess where she had gotten the necklace, the hostess replied that sometime in the early ‘80s, she had found it in the gutter of a downtown Lincoln, NE street near a large hotel, where I now know my sister had lost it years before. The necklace is now one of my prized possessions.

Did you feel a breath of air?