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.]

EASTER TRADITIONS

I’m missing my mom this Easter.  We had great traditions!   

Here are a few of them:

 

• Mom made ham in a special way, decorated with maraschino cherries and rings of pineapple.
• We always had sweet potatoes when we made a ham.
• When we were younger she would make a white cake in the shape of a rabbit’s face – covered with shredded coconut to look like “fur.”
• Before Easter day, usually on Saturday, we colored eggs with a PAAS egg-decorating kit.
• Easter morning was just like Christmas at our house – only instead of having presents under the tree, there were baskets of treats and toys hidden all over the house.
• After finding the Easter goodies, we dressed for church.  This was a big deal and preparations for just the right clothes had been going on for days.  New dress, new shiny patent leather shoes, new special white anklets, new bonnet with matching purse.
• Our church always sang pretty much the same hymns on Easter Sunday.  There was “Up From the Grave He Arose” and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.”
• In front of the altar there were dozens of pots of Easter Lilies.  The amazing fragrance filled the whole building.  After the service, these flowers were distributed to the shut-ins, and we always took one home to my Grandma.
• Every year without fail, after I grew up and moved away, my mom would send me a special Easter Card.
• When my own mother became elderly and I was taking care of her, I would buy her one of these special white Easter Lilies to fill her apartment with the wonderful fragrance, to remind her of Grandma, and to let her know she was special.
• I would also buy her a corsage – usually a Cymbidium Orchid – for her to wear to church on her Easter Dress.  Then I would take her to my church and show her off! 
• When my own children were growing up at home, we incorporated a lot of my childhood traditions into our family life.  We colored Easter eggs, and they each got Easter baskets.  We dressed in our most special clothes before going to church.  And we always had a special Easter dinner – usually ham fixed the way my mom had taught me.
• I added something very important with my own family, however.  We talked about the death and resurrection of Christ and what it meant.  We made worshiping the central focus of our holiday.  

Traditions are important, but it seems we only appreciate them as we get older.

Today I saw a greeting card in my mailbox, and for one tenth of one split second I thought, “There’s mom’s card.”   Kinda sad – she’s in heaven.  But no, it’s NOT sad that she’s in heaven!  She’s happy, and I am too, even though I’m missing her.

Happy Easter!

The Neighborhood

My mother-in-law said that two inventions killed the neighborhood: the automatic dryer, and air conditioning.  Perhaps you can see her point, or perhaps it needs a bit of explaining. 

Before the dryer, ladies used to hang up the clothes in the backyard.  They had long, and sometimes complicated, clotheslines.  Laundry day was a ritual that started early in the morning with sheets, towels, clothing – and even underwear(!)  put on display for the neighbors to see.   Housewives hanging up and taking down row after row of unmentionables were just a few feet away from other housewives doing the same thing.  The result – TALKING over the backyard fence!

In the evenings, everyone fled from their hot, stuffy houses as soon as dinner was over.  The adults sat on the front porch.  The kids hopped on their bicycles and rode up and down the sidewalk, where they passed other kids who were jumping rope and playing four-square.  The result – adults waving to each other as they watched their kids, and kids joining in each others’ play. 

Voilà – The Neighborhood!

Now this may be too simplistic an explanation of neighborhood shrinkage, but all I know is that I grew up in an actual Neighborhood.

Ohio evenings were much cooler than daytimes (not like Texas!), and I loved playing outside then.  I could hear the crickets chirping as darkness approached.  The doves would be going at it: “Coo – ee – coo – oo – oo.”  Sounds of skates scraping on concrete, satisfying “boink, boink” of a rubber ball, sing-song chants of friends jumping singles or “double dutch”:

“Down in the valley where the green grass grows. 

There stands Sally, as sweet as a rose. 

She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet. 

How many kisses did she get last week. 

One jump, two jump, three jump, …”

All of this freedom of play happened within the comforting (but preoccupied!) gaze of our parents, and was boundaried by: “Be home by the time the street light comes on!”

Of course, our parents—who had by this time emerged from the porches and were standing by twos and threes, talking—didn’t break off their conversations and go in the minute the street light came on.  From that moment on we were on “borrowed time.”  As long as they stood there, we were still free to do--whatever. 

As dusk descended into darkness, the street lights illuminating the neighborhood in a rather spotty fashion, my sister or I would run inside for a jar and begin chasing “lightning bugs.”  We stood very still in the darkness, watched for the brief flicker of greenish-yellow light, pointed it out, raced to where last seen, saw it blink again, reached out – and grasped the slow-moving insects carefully in one hand.  

 Slowly, gently we put the other hand on top, moved the open jar into place, shook the bug till it dropped to the glass bottom, and snapped the lid on the jar.  It was such fiendish delight to stare at the poor thing as it walked around over the glass, dazed and confused, and weakly signaling its light again and again to its companions.  No use warning them!  We were off to hunt again!

“Linda, Lorraine!  Time to come in!”

We had been noticing our Mom –with our peripheral vision -- standing under the street light, and finishing her conversation with a “Well, it’s getting dark.”

We knew there was five more minutes.

Then, suddenly she was on the porch, and the magic was over.

“Lorraine!”  “Linda!”  Come inside now!

My sister and I liked to take our nightly catch with us into the house.  We set it on the top of the dresser as we put on our PJs, then watched the jar blink and glow after Mom turned off the bedroom light.  When we were little, we thought the light display would go on forever.  As we got older with jaded “experience,” we knew that the jar would smell bad in the morning and the bugs would be dead.  We stopped keeping them.

Oh well, there’s always another hunt … tomorrow night!