Fingerprint

I have a new item to add to my most prized possession list.   On second thought, it’s more like the only item on my most prized possession list.

I’m in love.

It’s a necklace and it deserves an explanation.

 

 

It was a gift to me from my darling, dear, precious friend Mrs. Z when EK was born.

At first I was baffled by it.

It was a brown cardboard box labeled Priceless Prints.  Inside was a ball of clay with a page of instructions.

The idea is to press a fingerprint from your loved one in the clay and then return it to the company and they will turn it into a silver pendant.

A keepsake treasure of a loved ones fingerprint.

I waited a while to do this, simply because her finger was just so tiny.

You can see that the whole pendant is the size of my pinky, her little fingerprint only claiming a small part of the silver.

Recently, I felt it was time to capture it forever.

 

 

I

 

 

That small indention is the fingerprint of my daughter.   At close inspection, you can make out the wavy lines.

The gem is her birthstone. A garnet for January.

The back is stamped with her initials EKW.

I will carry a piece of her with me for the rest of my life.

When I leave her at school for the first time in a few years, and then return to an empty home, no doubt I will touch this necklace, thinking of her and hoping she’s doing alright.  And I will check the clock a hundred times before 3:00.

When she packs her bag for her first overnight sleepover, the first time away from me for the night, I will still have her near me, secretly hoping the phone will ring and she’ll ask me to come get her.  I’ll jump up in my pajamas, not bothering to dress myself and rush right over.

When I drive away from her dormitory, tears streaming down my cheeks, continually looking in my rearview mirror, I will think back to the day I pressed her tiny forefinger into the clay to make this necklace.

I will wear it around my age spotted neck, through all the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

 

 

I love her little hands, her little fingers, the tiny fingernails with chipped red polish.  I think of her fingerprints.  Their uniqueness to her and no one else.  They are her mark.  I wonder where her little hands will go, what they will do.  And I pray that she will leave her fingerprints on this world in a good way.  That she will do good with her hands, that she will touch people’s lives and make a mark.  A one of kind, unique touch that only she is capable of.

As far as I’m concerned though, she already has.