November is the color of gold. Leaves are in their final stage of decay before carpeting the earth with their brilliance. The sun is a particular shade of yellow gold as the days get shorter. Pumpkins are still in vogue as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving at the end of the month. Pumpkin pies and golden turkey. Gold has always been my favorite metal of choice for jewelry. And Topaz, that brilliant golden amber gem, is the birthstone of November.

I am a November baby but I have a confession to make. I am not a fan of Topaz. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about Topaz. It’s just when it comes to gems, I prefer the deep blue of a sapphire, the mysterious depth of a ruby, or the prism of colors dancing off a diamond. Topaz just doesn’t do it for me. What I have learned as I’ve gotten older is that Topaz actually comes in a range of colors. It can be blue, pink, or green. It can even be clear. The rarest ones can be red or golden orange. Which begs the question, why did no one ever tell me this before? Instead, my many years of birthstone birthday gifts including rings, necklaces, various pins, and earrings are collecting dust in my jewelry box. I just don’t connect with them but I can’t let them go either. Which means I actually do have some sort of connection even if it’s only nostalgia.

What is it about connection? It’s a feeling or an emotion that is stimulated once a song or a movie or a person or, yes, a stone comes into your sphere. I’ve been thinking a lot about connections lately. How we make them, how we keep them, and how we let them go. If we’ve never connected with something or someone, then the letting go is painless. There was nothing there to hold it, no emotional tie or mental picture to keep it close to the heart. But having a close connection be lost or cut can hurt like the dickens. The biggest question is always why? What happened, how did the connection get severed, was it something I said? Often there is no good answer. If it’s a lost connection with another person, they are usually not inclined to sit down and discuss the logistics of the letting go. Closure is not an option which means I have to figure it out and close it myself.

You can have a strong connection with someone and still not be on the same page. Connections take work, there is no doubt about that. They need to be fed and nurtured. It takes at least two to keep it strong. It needs to be forged often like the gems I was referring to. When I was still working I kept a card taped to my computer with an expression that had resonated with me. It stated, “Pressure creates diamonds”. There were times in my job when the pressure felt intense like connections sometimes do. I had to remind myself many times that the pressure was worth it in the long run but to be honest, that was not always the case. Still not a diamond, although I am very strong in many ways. Sometimes breaking a connection is exactly what is needed for me to move on. And that can be the hardest part of all.

So…do I sever my tenuous connection with Topaz or do I celebrate it in all of its rainbow colors and own my birthstone? Who made it my birthstone anyway? Supposedly it goes all the way back to biblical times when a first-century historian by the name of Josephus believed there was a connection between the twelve months of the year, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the twelve stones on a warrior’s breastplate. There’s the word again. There’s no getting away from it. Connections are what keep life vibrant and interesting. They are messy and wonderful. They test boundaries. They are challenging. In my estimation, they are the reason for this human experience. And I can only be thankful for that.