my magic earrings

About 25 years ago, I bought a pair of Swarovski crystal, clear, tear-drop earrings for $20, at Dayton's in the Rosedale shopping mall, Roseville, MN.  I can see myself in that store.

I hardly ever wore these magic earrings, or any others. Looking back, I wonder why I bought them for I almost never wore jewelry until the last several years.  I rediscovered my shimmering, tear-drop crystal earrings when I moved to CA and someone gave me two strands of Swarovsky crystal necklaces. One choker length, one quite long that I usually double to appear like two shorter necklaces. If I want to go really fancy, I wear all three strands with my magic earrings.

Simple. Matches everything. And plain enough to please my plain chick aesthetic.

I now consider these inexpensive earrings magic because I have twice lost one of them. And twice the lost earring re-appeared many months later.

The first time I lost them, I had done my daily laps at the Mountain View pool, put on the earrings and my necklace after showering and then joined a friend from the pool for a lunch meeting. She had taken me out to look at houses in Los Altos, Mountain View and Palo Alto. She already owned a townhouse, free and clear but she wanted to buy a big house. Kay is not her real name. She is from Thailand, and shares the income from a string of lumberyards throughout Thailand that she and her ex-husband still own together. Kay is rich.

Kay came to US when her now thiry-something daughter was born, so her daughter would have American citizenship. Kay said it was during the Viet Nam war, she feared communism would take over all of Asia and many of her friends had one of their babies in this country. The plan, which Kay executed, was for this one child to grow up, go to top American boarding high schools, then top universities and the oldest child would, one by one, sponsor its siblings and parents.

Kay's eldest, her daughter, went to a boarding school in suburban Chicago and then graduated from Brown. Her eldest son graduated from Stanford. Kay decided to live in Silicon Valley because of her visits to Palo Alto to see her son while he studied there. Her next youngest son, and youngest child, graduated from London School of Economics. They are all U.S. citizens now, sponsored by the eldest daughter.

Kay wanted to buy a bigger house so her daughter could have a mortgage tax deduction. She had enough cash to buy her house outright. Her budget, around 2008, was one million. She had gone through a couple real estate agents.

The first agent, in a stroke of bad luck for the agent, gave Kay the purchasing advice that Kay eventually followed. It was important to Kay to live within certain parameters geographically. I kept telling her that if I had her money, I'd buy a house in Sausalito or even in SF. Kay was fixed on Silicon Valley and would only consider buying in Los Altos, Palo Alto or, in what she considered a step down, Mountain View. And, for a long time, she'd only look at new houses.

There were not many new homes in these suburbs. We must have looked at them all.

Her first agent had told her she'd never find a new house that met her other standards. That first agent told Kay to buy a house in Los Altos and do some remodeling. Which is what she ended up doing in the end, but another realtor got the commission.

Then Kay got a pre-approved mortgage. It was easy for her to get a mortgage because she has so much cash. She wanted the mortgage tax deduction for her daughter. The bank officer who approved her mortgage had recommended her nephew, a newly licensed real estate agent.

That nephew was in his early twenties and had no understanding of customer service. He acted like getting a sales commission on a million dollar house was his right and he gave no indication that he felt obligated to show Kay, who comes from a culture that gives rich customers a lot of deference, any attention. He sometimes did not bother to go inside the houses Kay asked to see, just waited in the car.

After one day touring homes with Kay and that young man, I told her she needed to find a more experienced realtor, one who would actually earn the significant commission.

So Kay asked around, chose a realtor, a British citizen of African descent.  Kay asked me to join her for her first meeting with the new realtor, over that lunch. Sometime during the lunch, I realized one of my magic earrings was missing.

I stood up, shook all my clothes, had both Kay and the realtor look all over the restaurant. Kay confirmed that I had both earrings on when she and I had left the pool shower room. And Kay later confirmed that the earrings was gone gone gone.

About six months later, that earring fell on the floor of my apartment.  At the time, I reasoned that it had lodged in a fold of my clothing the day I thought I had lost it and it had come home with me in my clothing, undetected.

Last fall, 2014, I wore these crystal teardrops most days and one day, I realized I had lost one. I combed my home to find the missing earring. I had no idea where I had lost it. Since one earring from that particular pair had magically reappeared once, every time I put on some crystal earrings, I would go through a lot of stuff hoping to find my favorite, simplest one. My other crystal earrings have color, pink or blue, and are a tad fancy. I like the plain aesthetic of a tear drop.

I so totally gave up on these earrings. I came close to tossing out the remaining one a couple times. I considered offering it to a friend who does only collage with found, or gifted, objects. I still think my artist friend would have done something interesting with my earring.

A few days ago, tidying up, a teardrop earring fell on my carpet. I told myself it was the one I had held onto, that it couldn't be the missing one.  But I checked. The one I had held onto was in my jewelry box and the lost one was in my hand.

Magic earrings.

If only my other lost favorite earrings would reappear. I can't let go of a blue earring by Patricia Locke. I loved that pair. One of the earrings has been lost for a few years. I don't expect the matching one to turn up. I once ordered just one earring at a gift shop in Ann Arbor, after I learned that Patricia Locke would sell just one. These are not inexpensive earrings, especially for costume jewelry.  I paid about fifty dollar, maybe twenty years ago, for the blue Patricia Locke pair. I imagine just one replacement earring would cost fifty.  If I had fifty spare dollars, I might try to order it but I don't.

I do have a pair of magic earrings, though.

Kay dragged that British realtor all over Silicon Valley, and included me often. I was fascinated to see many million dollar homes, to see what different parts of SV look like.  Kay, who didn't know me very well, was quite pleased that I was so happy to accompany her. And the realtor was glad to have me.

That realtor was also not great at her job. Kay and her daughter kept pushing up the range of houses they asked to see. They acted as if a $250K difference in price was nothing. They'd look at a 'cheap' house, maybe $900K, then look at one priced at $1.2 and scathingly compare the two homes, complaining a lot about the cheaper one.  I listened to many such exchanges until finally I said "You two are acting like a $250K price difference should not mean the houses are very different in terms of the quality of what you get. $250K is a lot of money. Maybe you can afford to pay more but you are wasting your time. You've seen at least 100 houses, your price range changes daily. You need to set a price range, look what is on the market and buy."

Kay's daughter was driving, I was in the backseat with the realtor. The realtor whispered "Thank you" to me and I said, loud enough for the women in the front seat to hear, "I should not be doing your job. You should be more honest with Kay. You should be the one telling her she has to stop pretending $250K or $300K is nothing. You should be asking her to commit to a price range and stick with it."  The realtor later told me she had no other customers and didn't mind spending endless days househunting with Kay.  When Kay finally bought, I had moved to Berkeley. The realtor sent me a thank you note. Not even a small restaurant gift certificate. If I had not approved of her, Kay would not have hired her. And I did the heavy lifting, getting Kay to focus her financial choices and stop wasting time.

I humble submit that my advice was quite timely, since the country was already into depressed housing prices. Prices did not stay mildly depressed for long, not in Silicon Valley.

Kay wanted a new house, she kept saying, because with a used house, someone might have died in the house and she didn't want to risk that. She talked a lot about the bad mojo (my vocabulary, not hers). Most of the few new houses on the market when Kay was shopping were not, not at all, what she wanted. She wanted a very grand, luxurious house.

She ended up doing what the first realtor had said she'd have to do. She bought a very big but poorly maintained house in Los Altos. It had a huge yard, which was hugely important to Kay. She not only wanted a new house, but a large yard. I don't think we saw a single new house that had a big yard. The house she bought in Los Altos was on a huge corner lot, on a street lined with towering, mature shade trees. She did a gut-rehab of the kitchen, main living space and the baths. And her realtor's husband, a construction guy, got that gig. I was glad for that because that realtor put in hundreds of hours before Kay chose.

Her daughter was living in Singapore at the time. She told me she, the daughter, had looked at over 300 condos before she bought her apartment in Singapore. She said she and her mother were very fussy.

And rich.  Kay had always been able to afford more house than the homes we looked at. She did not dare tell anyone, not even her realtor, what her true budget was.

Magic earrings are sort of like magic beans. I wish my earrings might give me the power to make wishes that come true. What would I wish for?  Hmmm. . . . . a house with a garden, maybe in Marin.  A house in Sausalito? A house within walking distance of the ferry to SF? A gut-rehabbed Victorian in SF or a rehabbitable house in SF?  If I'm buying with magic wishes, price is no object.

I suspect price was no object for Kay and her daughter. They just held the cultural value that they should never tell anyone how much they could spend.

One question I never asked Kay, for I saw she had cultural norms of deep privacy about all things financial:  if her daughter lived in Singapore, why did she need the mortgage deduction?  I knew that, at least at that time, Americans do not have to pay income earned while living abroad until they earn more than $80K. Her daughter, fluent in Chinese and English, worked for an investment bank. Her daughter got bonuses, in her early thirties of several hundred thousand dollars a year. Kay let that slip because of her maternal pride. Her daughter, only at the investment house for two years, got a $300K bonus in 2008, at the bottom of the economic downturn.