Jewelry

1.

In last week's "Call The Midwife," (PBS) a young vicar proposed to one of the midwives.  He couldn't afford a ring, so he wrapped a circle of grass around her finger.  "I love it more than anything you could have bought me," she said.

Women love jewelry given to them by their men.   Carlene has recently spent more to re-string a seventy-year-old string of pearls than they probably cost her sweetheart when he bought them for her in the Forties.

"They may not even be real, I don't know, but he gave them to me!"

2.

To be walking through a craft fair or antique store and have a man buy a  piece of jewelry for you, to have someone you love choose a piece that "looks like you" for no particular reason--that's a gift that is a forever memory of the day, a treasure.

Joy makes jewelry out of clay--beautiful renditions of insects and flowers and angels.  Last week she gave me two daisy pins, one for me, one for Daisy.  I keep my collection of colorful Joy Jewelry in a drawer all by itself.

3,

Pam and I were shopping one day this week and I tried on a silver bracelet with elephants engraved on it. "I wish they were donkeys!" I said.

She and Marcos, the clerk, began talking about the power of elephants, never mind their being co-opted as political-party symbols.

"You have to buy it!" she said--and I almost did.  But then it hit me--I rarely wear the jewelry I already have.  So I decided, instead, to go home and put my  jewelry out in an obvious place--Pam's idea--and start wearing it more often.

Going through my jewelry drawer was like a trip into friendship and family, finding gifts of bracelets and earrings and necklaces that I hadn't worn in a while. Some pieces were souvenirs of Taos, North Georgia, Vermont, and other places I've traveled.

4.

Jan and I have been friends and next door neighbors for years, but she told me a story last night I'd never heard.

Jan wears pretty jewelry every day. "Every day I wear something of my mother's and something Gene gave me." She showed me a bracelet Gene gave her (her late husband--a sweeter man you've never met) and a piece from Lira--who would have been 103 this year.

Then she told me the story:  The morning after her brother Bill died, she was walking down Greely, one street over, and she found a  handcrafted silver bracelet on the street.  "He loved handmade silver jewelry," she said, "And he and Bob [her other brother]  always brought me silver jewelry from their travels."

She has worn that Greely bracelet all these years. "Thank you, Jesus, Thank you, Bill!" she said when that bracelet showed up for her out of the blue on the day she was grieving his death.

"I used to wonder why old women sometimes wear so much jewelry," she said.  "Our hands aren't pretty anymore and who wants to call attention to crepe-y necks and arms?"

"But I've decided now that it's not about glamour.  It's about wearing memories of people we love."