As I prepare to pack up my house to move down the street, I have found all kinds of trash to recycle…and all kinds of treasures I had lost. It’s been fun to find pictures and drawings from the kids from their preschool days, and stacks of CDs from when I didn’t listen to all my music through Spotify. I also found some jewelry my grandmother had left me before she passed away last year.
My father’s mother loved gold jewelry and shoes. I used to love when she would come to visit us from Rome when I was a child. She would let me try on both, and I felt like a tiny glamourous Sophia Loren. I grew up keeping the shoe obsession, but grew to develop a fondness for silver instead. So when she left me a box of some special gold pieces, I lovingly tucked them away, just happy that she had thought of me.
I came across that box once again this weekend, and opened it to investigate its contents. In the midst of gold hoops and seventies-style brooches, I found a tiny gold serpent ring, with incredibly small emerald eyes. It struck me that it looked so out of place with all this other more refined jewelry. Is it possible my grandmother had been a bit of a badass? That she might have had a bit more sass to her than I ever realized?
So I took it out of the box, and I put it together with the tiny skull ring my daughters had bought for me. For some reason, the two of them seem to go together. At least Gianna seems to think so. And so now my “ring finger” has become my “celebrate the important women in my life” finger, with the gifts they have given me.
Funny, at first I really missed my big diamond. Of course, I missed it because of what it represented, but also because it was a beautiful ring. It has been replaced by some things that aren’t nearly as sparkly, but so meaningful.
Good tradeoff.
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