Thursday, May 22, 2014

THE DRAWER OF JEWELS




            Once there was a little girl who loved jewels.  Blue jewels, yellow jewels, green jewels – any color would do.  They fascinated her.  She could sit and stare at them.  She could run her fingers through them and watch them sparkle.  She loved to pick one up and hold it to the light and see the sun through its many faces.  At night she would dream of jewel fountains and jewel rainbows and jewel waterfalls.


          Now, in loving the jewels – it may not seem so – but the little girl was very naughty.  Her mother did not like jewels.  They were not holy.  Her father did not like jewels.  They cost too much money and he was very busy working and spending all his money on food and clothes for the family.  The older sister did not like jewels.  They did not please her mother.

          In fact, the older sister had collected a whole drawer full of jewels and then had stopped wearing them.  They lay there in the dark, quiet drawer, day after day, with no one to admire them or play with them or watch them sparkle in the sunshine.

          This was too much for the little girl.  She wanted to see those jewels every day, but she was forbidden to open the drawer.  Often she would go to the doorway of the older sister’s room, and look at the chest of drawers that contained that special drawer, and think about running her fingers through them.  But then someone would come down the hallway and she would scamper away so as not to be caught standing in the sister’s doorway.

          Oh, how the little girl wished her sister would give her some of the jewels.  If she didn’t want them, why should she let them lay in the drawer?  It seemed so wasteful of a precious treasure.  She longed to walk into the forbidden room, open the drawer, and run her fingers through the strands of pearls and many-colored gems.  She could picture herself trying them on and spinning in front of the mirror.

          One day the temptation was too much.  None of the rules of the house seemed to matter, nor did displeasing her mother or angering her sister.  No fear was so big that it blocked her plan to play with the jewels.  

It didn’t take long.  Her dad left for his work of painting houses, her sister left for school, and her mom was baking in the kitchen.  In she went, tugged open the heavy drawer and stared in guilty pleasure at the contents.

There was no stopping her now.  She picked up one necklace after another and slipped them over her head, walking to the mirror on her big sister’s vanity table to admire herself.  She did not see a five-year-old girl in a muslin night gown with tousled brown hair.  She saw a princess in a golden tiara wearing three pearl necklaces!

Then she heard her mother’s heavy footsteps in the hall, and the magic was over.  She was scolded, sent to bed for the day, and that evening was subjected to her sister’s angry silence.

The next day there was a lock on the drawer!

But there is no lock on dreams.  Or on the imagination.  The girl now had a dream that someday she would own all the colorful jewels that she wanted.


She grew up and took a job.  She worked hard.  She never made much money – not the kind that buys real diamonds and gold and silver – but fortunately there were jewelers who made beautiful things that even poor girls could afford.  And she bought lots of those kinds of gems.  She bought pins and brooches and many-stranded necklaces.  She had gold metal and silver metal jewelry of every shape and description.  She collected clip-on earrings, and screw-type earrings, and – after they invented them – earrings for pierced ears.  There were luminescent pearls of amber, pink and rose, and many, many strands of ivory pearls – long, loopy strands, double and triple strands, and short chokers with a single teardrop pearl.  If there was any shade of red, green, yellow, orange or blue that she didn’t have in her large jewelry chests, I haven’t seen it!

Her jewelry was fascinating, and reflected the history of her life and loves – from the picture locket her true love gave her during the Great Depression to the last piece she wore to her granddaughter’s wedding.

She was a great lady with many-colored jewels, and she always shared them generously with all the little girls in her life.

THE END

Ldm 5-22-14
[Story loosely based on my mother's life.]