A sad, forlorn little post

Back when I was significantly younger with longer legs and fewer stretch marks etc etc than I have now, I had a kind, clever, and funny friend with a crush on me. I adored him, and we spent a lot of time together, but I didn't reciprocate the crush, and, being an extremely decent and restrained human being, he very seldom pushed the issue. He did, however, take me out to dinner for my birthday, and gave me a necklace he had made. On strictly aesthetic grounds, it did not rate highly: it was a small sand-dollar, painted in garish red and yellow acrylic paint, with a paperclip hot-glue-gunned on to the back through which a string was threaded - a competent kindergartener could just about have pulled it off - but it had a very sweet and personal message written on the back in ballpoint pen, and I have treasured it for the last nearly 20 years. Part of my attachment I think comes from pride that I have been at least once in my lifetime capable of inciting open adoration in such an extremely worthwhile human being, and the other half of my attachment to the necklace is penance for how callously I ultimately treated his feelings. (I have since apologized, and he - now happily married with children, still a spectacular person and a once-a-year friend - has forgiven, but I still squirm with horrible shame when I think about him). I planned to keep it in my jewelry box forever.

Beach mementos painted in bright colours, however, are kryptonite for four year olds, and tonight I went into my daughter's bedroom for nightly story-plus-cuddle and discovered the necklace smashed into red and yellow dust on the floor. I said, "Oh, no, no, no, my necklace, no" and started to cry, triggering howling guilty sobs from my daughter, who wanted to be comforted and told it was OK (which is what I usually say when things get broken), but of course it wasn't at all OK and I couldn't get myself together to pretend it was. Ultimately we had a reconciliation of sorts, albeit an unsatisfactory one: I took her on my knee and cuddled her and told her how sad I was about the necklace, and that it would really help me if she could tell me that she was sorry, and she tried very hard to put the blame on a friend who'd been over to play earlier, but ultimately did apologize, and then we read stories together and she tried to be silly to cheer me up, and I said that I wasn't quite ready to be silly yet because I was still feeling sad about my necklace, and then she started to sniff and asked for a hug and then she fell asleep as I cuddled her. She will wake up tomorrow having forgotten all about it, and I will absorb the hurt because she is the present and the future whereas the necklace was and is now past, (and besides, just now there is another extremely worthwhile man who inexplicably openly adores me) but right at this moment it just really hurts, and I can't bear to look at the pile of smashed sand-dollar bits on the kitchen counter.

The point of which is to say: very soon I will remember to be grateful for what I do have, and I am really, really sorry if I ever broke anything of yours - literal or metaphorical - that you minded about.