So I’m cleaning out our safe deposit box and find a handful of jewelry in a number 10 envelope labeled “Sentimental Jewelry.”
There’s a gold ring with a stylized head-and-shoulders bear in profile inscribed on it. The bear is wearing a jacket and tie. I recognize this immediately. My high school friend Anne drew this bear endlessly (we called it a gnu, I have no idea why). And she had this ring engraved for me as a gift.
I find my mother’s diamond wedding ring, the one she wore when she married my father in 1952. My parents divorced when I was seven, and at some point, my mother gave me this ring as it holds no sentimental value to her.
I also find my charm bracelet. Oh, the charm bracelet, a remnant of the past. Who has charm bracelets any more? Mine is silver and loaded with souvenirs of my youth: my interests (tennis racket), milestones (Sweet 16), and trips. A maple leaf from Canada, an aspen leaf from Colorado, a Minuteman and a cannon from Boston, and a Wisconsin Dells flag all survive from trips with my Girl Scout troops over the years. I even have a horse and carriage from a memorable trip to New Orleans in third grade and an elephant from my first trip to India in 1976 with the Brown University Chorus.
But that’s all I recognize. The other items must have meant something to me at some point, but I have no memory of why.
A pair of glass amber earrings stirs a dim memory of possibly a great grandmother. I remember wearing them in high school before I got my ears pierced as a college freshman.
A pair of clear glass earrings (are they tiny penguins?) stirs up nothing.
A silver locket with a flower on the front is empty; I think Grandma Spieler gave it to me for my confirmation in the Presbyterian Church, but I’m not sure.
Then there’s a mysterious green jade heart on a gold chain and a cheap silver ring with a mottled teal and lime glass gem. Possibly an old boyfriend gave me the necklace, but which one, and when?
I feel a bit sad that I can’t remember the significance I once attached to these objects. No doubt I should have labeled them with a note to remind myself of my past. I suppose I thought the items alone would serve that purpose, but that turns out not to be true.
If I’d taken them out more frequently and looked at them over the years, that might have keep the memories alive, linking them back to their origins like charms on a bracelet. But as it is, I now have the objects but not the memories.
So I’ll put them away again, this time in a drawer where I’ll come across them more frequently. And maybe, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night some night, and boom! I will suddenly know exactly where, when, and why. Then these inanimate objects will light up with life again and take me back on a sentimental journey.
