I think I have to state right off that I’m not being compensated for this event in any way AND HOLY HELL do I wish I were! Also, that my husband isn’t eligible to enter even though he totally wants to.
Why?
Hope you’re sitting down.
In order to highlight the release of Cathy Maxwell’s new book, The Marriage Ring and the role jewelry plays in the novel, Avon books is giving away a $1500.00 gift certificate to Fragments, an online jewelry store.
Yeah, you read that right. $1500.00 US.
In The Marriage Ring, the heroine has an emotional attachment to a ring during the course of the story, and Maxwell highlights the significance of her own pieces of jewelry in this video about the book:
The poignant part is at the beginning, and then at 2:25. Have a tissue handy.
I love how she talks about the significance of jewelry for men, too.
The contest will run from today, 22 February, through Friday 26 February. That’s long for a typical contest here, but it’s a big prize, too.
Comments will close midnight on 26 February, and a winner will be chosen at random from among the contest.
The winner will be announced Monday 1 March at 11:00 am EST right here.
Contest is open to entries from the US and Canada only (I’m sorry).
The prize of a $1500 gift certificate to Fragments jewelry is bring provided by Avon books.
I am not being compensated to run this promotion, much as I wish I were decked out in sparkly things. Additional disclaimers: Lather, rinse, repeat. Accept no substitutes. Call toll free before digging. Variations in shading within garment may occur. Not the actual Beatles. This presentation has been modified from the original version to fit your screen.
Keep cool; process promptly.
Enough boring details – let’s have fun!
So, how do you enter this big honking giveaway? Leave a comment and tell us about the piece of jewelry that is the most significant to you. Where did it come from, why is it meaningful, and why is it worth more to you than its relative cost? Even though I’m not eligible: my wedding ring is probably my most significant piece of jewelry. It’s a plain gold band, very beat up and notched after 10 years of wearing, but inside Hubby’s are the words “i carry your heart,” and inside mine it says, “i carry it in my heart.” We read that poem as part of our vows when we were married, and I carry the words on my finger that folks used to believe led right to the heart.
What about you? Share, and you’re entered to win.
The absolute most important jewelry I own is the golden heart shaped locket that my maternal grandmother – Nanny – got from Pa before he shipped out in the navy for WWII. He wanted to propose and give her a ring. She would have none of that, saying she didn’t want to be a widow with a ring before she was married. She was only 16 at the time! So he came to her before he left with this rather large gold locket that he had both of their pictures in. He looks handsome in his uniform, and she looks sassy! She wore this locket the whole time he was gone. When he returned safely, they got engaged and married very quickly. They had 7 children! My Mom is the middle girl. And I’m the middle granddaughter. I think of my Nanny every time I wear the locket, and every day when I see it in my jewelry box. The photos are fading, but the memories are still there!
sleepingaurora at hotmail dot com
short59
My hubby gave me a sapphire and diamond necklace for our anniversary this year. I don’t normally like blue, so I asked, “Why blue, Honey?” He said it’s to commemorate my late Mother’s September birthday and my dear nephew’s September birthday. I was so touched.
My most previous piece of jewelry is a ring, silver, bought from a mall cart vendor for $25. It’s my wedding ring. My husband had asked me to marry him several times and I’d put him off. I don’t know why, but the thought of getting married really freaked me out. Then one day, out of nowhere, I just said “Hey, you wanna get married?” He said “Sure!” We made an appointment with a JP, went to the courthouse to get a license, picked up a pair of matching bands and a day later we were married. Surprised the hell out of everyone who knew us.
for my college graduation my grandmother gave me one of her gold rings as a gift. I don’t know how much it’s worth and it is the plainest band of gold, but it means so much to me. I won’t wear it to certain occasions for fear that I’ll lose it. I’ve lately lost several family members (5 in three years) to various causes and so I’m glad to have any memento of my family. I’ve often told my godfather that when he kicks his heels up I call dibs on his thirty dollar paint splattered watch 🙂
Has to be my wedding ring – nothing else could make me crazy if I lost it!
I’m a cliche but it’s my engagement ring. I was the least surprised girl proposed to ever – I even told my fiance when I wanted it to happen (I though Christmas would be nice, so my 95 yr old grandfather could be part of the fun). The ring is a solitaire emerald-cut diamond. It is much larger than I had expected because my husband’s godfather is a jeweler and managed to find some mysterious “store discounts” when we went to his store to shop for it.
For me, the value in my ring isn’t so much for me as it is for us. It represents his family, in the purchase. It represents my family, because I first opened it and saw it at our Christmas dinner. It represents my husband and my new family, because we picked it together. It’s traveled with us overseas, been in our first apartment and all subsequent homes, gotten hair stuck in it from our various dogs, been slimed by slobbery family babies, and once nearly fell off in the homemade grape leaves. It’s the history of our love, right there on my finger.
My dad had a rough childhood: His dad died suddenly, violently in front of him when my father was only eleven; his mother, from that point on, ignored his existence. The parents—Don and Della—of one of his school friends took an interest and looked after him, having him over for dinner, inviting him to family events, emotionally supporting him.
As I grew up, Della was more of a grandmother to me than my own (who maintained her neglect throughout the remainder of her bitter life); her children were unable to give her grandchildren, so I became the de facto granddaughter. Holiday dinners, Sunday visits where she taught me to play cards (and, later, mix drinks), wonderful letters once our family moved away, and postcards from their international travels… Every year, our Christmas feasts consisted of McDonald’s served on their best china, French champagne, and homemade Czech pastries.
Her health deteriorated (not because of the McDonald’s and champagne and pastries, mind you), and she passed away two years ago. Two months after her death, I received a package in the mail. Inside was an antique hatpin, a shakily transcribed poem—Stanley Cook’s “The Butterfly”—and a 1960s-era cocktail ring. 14-karat gold with ten small diamonds laid on the round, flat face; the band curves to cleanly fit the base of the finger, and I have never seen another like it. Della had sent it to me, gifted it to me (and she could have easily left it to her daughter).
I wear it when I’m low, when I’m excited, when I’m nervous. Then I feel loved, just as I loved Della. Even if she wasn’t my real grandmother.
My favorite piece of jewelry is a small Turquoise ring my then 12 year old brother me at the age of 8. We went to an antique/flea market show with my mom and I fell in love with this small ring and my brother who had saved his money to but comic books for himself handed the money to the lady selling the ring and bought it for me. Although the ring has seen it’s better days and no longer fits it the brightest and most beautiful piece I own.
The most significant piece of jewelry I have is something that most people look at and say, “what the hell is THAT thing?”
Actually, I thought the same thing when I opened it as a gift, but I did not say it out loud. The person who gave it to me was my then 2-year-old-son. It was our first Mother’s day on our own, and though new to the single motherhood game, I knew I couldn’t question this gift. It is a shapless blob of shiny, garishly red glass that was handmade by a special-needs young woman in our community, which makes it all the more endearing. Every time I look at it my heart squeezes, and I remember his pride at picking out something I “loved” so much!
The most significant piece of jewerly I have is my wedding ring. It reminds me of our wedding. Even though it was a quickie ceremony in Vegas, my husband cried. He almost NEVER cries (the only other time was when our daughter was born), and seeing that kind of emotion from him assured me that he loved me. I don’t wear any other jewerly but this.
My favorite piece of jewelry is a necklace that my ex gave me (the romantic relationship didn’t last, but we’re still great friends). It was one of those gifts that clearly showed that he ‘got’ me. I would never have bought it for myself, but it’s perfect and I love it.
As with most others, my significant jewelry would be two rings. Both are wedding rings and neither are mine. One belonged to my paternal great-grandmother, who got divorced in the 1920’s but kept her wedding ring and raised her daughter on her own in rural Nebraska. I wear this one daily on my right hand, along with the diamond ring I bought myself when I turned 35. The other was my mom’s when she was married to my dad. She’s happily remarried and I know that she and my dad are better off not married, but the ring reminds me of the time when I was little. I don’t have a wedding ring of my own, so having those two is precious to me.
My favorite and most sentimental piece of jewelry is a ring I received for my 21st birthday.
My father had helped design all of the major jewelry for my mother including her engagement/wedding/anniversary ring at a jewelry store in town. I’d always wanted something from that store. For my 21st birthday, my had decided that I would get something from there. However, my dad died a month before my birthday. A week after the funeral, my mom took me to the store and let me pick out a loose stone and the setting and I got to design my own ring. I always think of my dad when I wear it.
It’s terribly unoriginal, but my engagement ring. We were broke as hell when we got engaged, so my then-boyfriend bought me a ring with a sapphire center stone flanked by small diamonds, all set in white gold. We’d talked over what I wanted out of a ring, and he took one of our best friends to help pick it out. The sapphire is of extra significance because our birthdays are two years and two days apart in September (9/9 and 9/11). I’ve been wearing it for eight years and I still get compliments on it. It reminds me that if we can survive being as poor as we were, we can survive anything.
I no longer own my favourite piece of jewelry. I’m not much for frills, and while I like pretty things I tend to spend my limited cash on good quality clothes rather than accessories, but as I child and young teanager I wore a simple silver chain with a hamsa (a hand shaped charm to ward away the evil eye). My parents and I lived in Israel for a year or so when I was a toddler and they probably bought it there, although I don’t think I started wearing it until I was a few years older. The pendant itself was small, probably very cheap, but intricately designed and I loved that necklace so much that for years I never, ever, took it off. I showered in it, slept in it and thought of it as a part of myself. I lost it when I was around 16 while camping with friends. The chain was old and must have broken at some point during one of our hikes. I know that it is silly and superstitious, but I really did feel like it offered some small protection from ill luck and worried for a long time that something bad would happen because I no longer wore it.
The actual necklace was nothing special and I’ve seen lots of similar pendants, but I loved that one still miss it.
When I was twelve, I asked for a ring for Christmas. I was thinking along the lines of some sort of silver band off one of the carts at the mall. Instead my parents went out and bought a gold ring set with a orange garnet. I promptly hated it. HATED it.
It wasn’t at all what I wanted. Plus, I hated yellow gold.
But I wore it because I’m the good daughter and I wear expensive presents even when I don’t like them. Funny thing? Every time I looked down, I thought of my parents. When I was going to do something terribly bad, I had a ring on my finger to remind me to keep to the straight and narrow. After a few months of wearing it I noticed how sparkly the garnet was and how perfect it fit on my finger. It was beautiful. And it reminded my of my parents. It still does.
I’ve had that ring 19 years and I still think sweet thoughts about my parents when I see it. A trashy silver ring would have faded into my jewelry box years ago. They didn’t get me what I asked for, they got me something better. Something lasting.
There is a bracelet that my mom gave to me when my daughter was born that I absolutely love! It was my grandma’s (mom’s mother) and it was given to her by her brother in 1918. It’s a gold bangle bracelet with flower designs etched all the way around. I only wear it on special occasions since I’m afraid something might happen to it. It means a lot to me because it was my grandma’s and it meant a lot to my mom. I plan to pass it on to my daughter when she is older.
I have a lot of jewelry that I love, but the most significant is a black star sapphire ring that I got for myself. When I graduated from university my father gave me a hundred dollars. I decided to hide it from myself so I wouldn’t spend it on groceries. I put it in a book safe. Whenever I was given money for a birthday or holiday I would put it in the book safe. One day I had to break into it and use some of it to buy a monthly bus pass. I was so disappointed to use that money to buy something as mundane as a bus pass that on my way home I stopped at a jewelry store. I told the man behind the counter that I wanted a star sapphire. He didn’t have one in the store, but over the course of a couple months he found me a really nice stone, designed a setting and made me a ring. I wear it on those drab days when I am feeling particularly plain, the stone itself is a dull dark grey, but then the light hits it and suddenly there is a star on my finger.
Easily my great great aunt’s ring. It’s platinum with little emerald chips. Beautiful. My mom wore it for years.
My most significant jewelry is a pair of garnet studs that were my grandmother’s, which my mother passed on to me after my grandmother died a few years ago. I wear them daily in my second holes.
Okay, it’s my engagement ring. I had nothing to do with picking it out, but I love it so because of the stories my husband told me about picking it out…he was so nervous, he thought he just look for awhile, spotted it and KNEW it was the one, hadn’t even planned on buying a ring for a couple of months…and then tells me how the lady at the jewelry store gave him York peppermint patties while calling in his credit.
(Only a man would stick that part in there.) He was so nervous with it burning a hole in his pocket he proposed the next day, and to be honest, he barely got that out. He just showed me the ring in the box, and before I could even process what it was, he twitched and the box closed! I was speechless, and he was speechless, and it was so sweet…and now, when I look at it, I think of York peppermint patties. : )
I have a similar story to the one alia told about the plush puppy. Just a couple of months after I started dating my now-husband, he surprised me on Valentine’s Day with… a plush hand puppet of one of the puppies from 101 Dalmatians. I was somewhat confused, as it seemed like an odd Valentine’s gift. I said thank you, and he said “That’s not really the gift. Look inside.” Stuffed in the puppy’s head was a box with a ring inside… with my birthstone. We hadn’t been seeing each other for long, and I almost choked. He said, “This isn’t an engagement ring. I just wanted you to know how serious I am about you.”
When I finally decided to marry him, he insisted we go get an engagement ring. I didn’t really want one. My mom didn’t have one, and neither did my grandma. He enlisted my best friend and they dragged me through the mall and into every jewelry store until I finally gave in and picked one out. They had to resize it and it was delivered to our apartment. I had just stepped out of the shower, and he ran into the room and slipped it onto my finger while I was still dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. He just couldn’t wait any longer. So I no longer wear the birthstone ring, but I keep it in my jewelry box.
When we went shopping for wedding rings, we wanted two-toned rings, to show that we were very different, but joining together, but they were really expensive. Finally he convinced me to go into a very expensive mall and in one of the stores there we found inexpensive two-toned custom rings. Unfortunately we fell in love with different styles of ring, but the jeweler convinced us that we didn’t need to have the rings match. We both love our rings. Last summer mine fell off my hand and disappeared and after a considerable search my husband told me to get the ring remade. Multiple times. And then asked my mom to make sure I replaced it. Easier said than done, as the sketch the jeweler had made no longer existed. Luckily, our wedding photographer had taken a close up so I was able to take the picture in and they were able to nearly recreate it. When I went in and looked at the final product, I knew it wasn’t quite the same- one band (they were crossed bands) was flat instead of rounded- but it was just as beautiful. And twice as expensive. A week later I found the original, which is now safe in my jewelry box, as this ring is a better fit. I’m not sure if I can say which ring is the most significant, but they all are reminders of his love and ability to reach me.
I’ve loved reading these stories, by the way.
My most treasured piece of jewelry is a puzzle piece shaped necklace.
Last semester I came to Texas State University and I met the sweetest boy in the whole world. His name was Jake Rakofsky and I know our souls were meant to be together. We fell in love and spent that semester living the time of our lives. His roommate, Chris, was starting dating a girl too and the four of us were together almost always. But on December 12, just as finals were ending, we were heading to our friend Carl’s house and a truck hit us. The rest of us were fine, but Jake didn’t make it.
After the accident, his mom was really there for Chris and I. We ended up spending a lot of time together over our Christmas break and growing close while sharing memories of the boy we all loved, each in our own way.
When the time came to spread Jake’s ashes, his mother came to our campus river. She brought the necklaces for Chris and I, and wore her own. They all matched; puzzle pieces with Jake’s name on the front and his birthday on the back, from James Avery. She couldn’t bring herself to put the day he passed.
I wear the necklace everyday. That woman gave me two of the greatest gifts in my life: her son and the necklace that has so much more meaning than any other piece of jewelry in my life.
I’m a pretty sentimental person, so almost all of my jewelry represents an important moment in my life. Having said that, I’ll pick the one that means the most – he ring my husband gave me when our son (and first child) was born. It is a thin band with tiny sapphires and diamonds all around. Sapphires are both my husband and son’s birth stone. I wear this ring whenever I have to travel or am feeling unsteady. I feel comforted when I wear it; it’s like he’s with me even when I’m far away.
My husband’s broad gold wedding ring.
I wear it on a thin gold chain so it surrounds a tiny heart of tiny diamonds— the last piece of jewellry he gave me.
He died a year ago.
Mine is definitely my wedding ring. I have a lovely engagement ring, but I don’t wear it very often. My wedding ring is the only piece of jewelry I wear every day. My ring and my husband’s both say ‘You have my heart’ on the inside.
We read that ee cummings poem at our wedding, too. 🙂
I have a gold-plated heart-shaped locket that I wore for my wedding and I was happily married for 28 years before my husband’s death. My mother wore it for her wedding and was married for 49 years before she died; HER mother wore it for her wedding and was married for 63 years. Needless to say, my daughter wore it for her wedding 10 years ago.
I’ve already passed my grandmother’s 112 year pendant watch on to my daughter. She had it cleaned and it’s running like a champ.
Like many, besides my wedding rings I have a few pieces of jewlery that are significant to me. But the one I most want to focus on is the eternity pendent my husband gave me when our daughters was born. I had a very rough pregnancy (bleeding, clotting, bed rest, you name it), and an even rougher labour (30 hours to find out she was frank-breech and ended up needing a c-section). And then an infection post-surgery. All bad. My daughter and I are fine now, and I’m very shortly due to give birth to our second child, a boy, and have had a perfectly normal pregnancy. But my husband gave me the necklace and pendant and to me it represents everything I had to go through to have this perfect little person in my life. I wear it everyday, and haven’t taken it off once.
I am so blessed to have my mother’s half-carat white gold diamond engagement ring, which is 50 years old, and my late maternal grandmother’s half-carat yellow gold diamond engagement ring, which is 70+ years old. I wear these two sandwiched around my mother’s yellow gold diamond eternity ring and they look absolutely beautiful together.
Kitty DuCane
It took me a long time to think of something because I have a LOT of jewelry. From cheap costume to expensive estate jewelry. I even make my own necklaces.
In the end I had three pieces tie for first place. Two share the same back story.
I uploaded a couple of lousy pictures of them to my photobucket account.
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o118/JamiSings/blog/Jewelry1.jpg
The first two pieces have to do with my best friend, Erin. Erin and her mom, Nancy, make and sell jewelry and have for years. Some through their website Cyrina – http://cyrina.com/
They had moved down to San Diego to be closer to the hospital where Erin was going to get her lung transplant. Erin had cystic fibrosis. I went down by train to spend the weekend. While down there Erin taught me how to make jewelry. I had spent time with her before, during Halloween, and they had even given me an anklet they made with wooden beads. The necklace I made isn’t the greatest, I got better with practice. The heavy beads it back tend to make it turn a lot. However, I made it under Erin’s supervision with lots of feedback.
I wore it several years later to Erin’s memorial service. She died on June 11th, 2005, almost six months to the day after she had gotten her double lung transplant. Erin was 26 years old.
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o118/JamiSings/blog/jewelry2.jpg
My grandma Pavlick was a jewelry fanatic. Like me, she had everything from costume to expensive pieces. I was suppose to get her jewelry when she died. However, greedy relatives swooped down instantly and took all the really nice stuff. Including my favorite piece, a long chain that had small, rounded but flat, colored stones every little bit, in pastel shades. Light green, pink, yellow, and blue. They sent me the things that they thought were worthless.
Well, I did love them all anyway because they were grandma’s. She was the grandparent I was closest to. My paternal grandparents lived in New Hampshire and I rarely saw them. Then grandma Russell died of a brain tumor (that they believe started as untreated skin cancer) and grandpa Russell got Alzheimers and wasted away. Grandpa Pavlick had died five years before I was born, in 1971. Grandma would come out to California every winter for three months.
One piece in particular I loved more then the others. It was a short thing with this funky ball in the center, very 1960s.
Well, I have these feelings about things – items I keep coming back to. I found afterwards I often bought very valuable antiques for very little money. Like the books I bought for $20 that turned out to be worth $5,000. (I’ve got to get around to selling them.) This piece I felt funny about, so I took it to be appraised.
Here’s what I found out – it’s actually a home made piece someone made out of some broken necklaces. The beads are glass spacer beads. It’s strung on fishing line. And the center? Those are Swarovski crystals on the end of every prong.
The piece, at the time I had it appraised, was worth $50. Probably more now.
So my aunts and uncles, thinking they were getting all the good stuff they could sell later on, and giving me what they saw as trash, accidentally gave me a valuable piece. Not hundreds or thousands of dollars, but still a pretty penny.
Now you might think me nasty for the reason I think this one is special, but I can’t help it because they were so nasty to me – and to grandma for not honoring her last wishes. I can’t help but feel this is grandma getting a little of her’s back from the other side. Yep, Grandma Pavlick got the last laugh.
My favorite piece of jewelry isn’t mine.
My sister and her husband had a long, extremely complicated relationship. He first got her attention by asking her 18-month-old daughter out for pizza and “allowing” Sis to tag along.
He proposed once, and then backed out. Two years later, he proposed again, but backed out again. Six years and one son later, he proposed a third time, this time accompanied by a ring with three diamonds – the “third time’s the charm” ring as my sister called it. They were married a week later in front of a district justice, exchanging narrow gold bands from Walmart.
Two days after their first anniversary, Oct 12, 2004, my brother-in-law passed away after a short battle against brain cancer. My sister couldn’t bear to wear or even see their rings, and gave them to her mother-in-law after the funeral, who had the engagement ring and wedding bands welded together into a single ring and inscribed with the words, “Love never dies.”
When Sis’ MIL died, I became the guardian of the ring until my niece turns 21.
My wedding ring is certainly significant and cherished, but one of the most special pieces of jewelry I own are a pair of clip-on earrings that were my mothers. The funny thing is that they aren’t beautiful, or even something you can wear regularly. They are large gold balls, hollowed out, that hang from a row of rhinestones. She bought them to match a New Years Eve party dress that was all gold sequins. The evening she spent getting ready, talking to me, and being so excited about the party she was going to attend is one of the few positive memories I have of her. And so, those gaudy, gold earrings are something I just wouldn’t part with for the world.
My special piece of jewelry is an antique gold child’s ring that fits on my left pinkee finger. My mother gave it to me as a Christmas gift thirty years ago, though I was not a child when she gave it. It was a gift so different than any other she ever gave me, her being a practical sort. I have no idea why she bought it, but I still have the ring, but I no longer have her. At least not on the earth plane. Each time I look at my little gold ring I think of her, remember her, and it always brings me joy. I’m told jewelry holds energy of those who owned it, and some day I’ll pass my ring to some stranger, as it was passed to me. I have never felt anything but love from my ring, and I know that whoever wears it after me will inherit that same love.
My thumb-ring-pendant. In the past three years, I lost almost a hundred pounds, and my thumbs got smaller, approximately two ring sizes smaller. Now, most people probably wouldn’t notice, but this little big change means that I can’t wear my favorite thumb ring anymore. It’s a simple stamped silver ring that I got about fifteen years ago and have been faithfully wearing on said thumb since. Something about that ring felt crazy, sexy, cool, and a wee bit rebellious. Needless to say, I was a’bumming when the ring was officially retired. It’s now my one of my favorite pendants. Strung on a faux leather cord, the ring is now a charm holder, with a selection of old earrings, beads, and charms. Every time I wear it, I remember that I can achieve what I set my mind to.
One Christmas, the fella found and bought lovely bracelets for all the women in the family—both our mothers, our daughter, then-daughter-in-law and for me—in emerald, sapphire, etc. I got a diamond bracelet at the family gathering before Christmas and was thrilled with the pretty.
We went to the Chicago area for Christmas day to visit the daughter, son-in-law and their new baby, and I got a kick out of seeing our daughter open her bracelet. Then I opened a present from my husband—the first bracelet was a decoy. He gave me a matching diamond necklace, bracelet and earrings—some really spectacular jewelry. They mean a lot because they’re from him—but they mean even more because he was able to totally surprise me by giving me a very nice “decoy bracelet.” He really is the bomb.
Code word: maybe52
Maybe I’ll win???
I was visiting my soon-to-be husband’s 90-something year old grandmother. We were sitting at her kitchen table when she calmly pulled off her thin platinum wedding ring and handed it to me. When I protested that she might want to ask her kids and grandkids about the fate of that ring, she said they’d only care about the diamond solitare but the wedding ring wasn’t really valuable.
She said it once had a twining rose pattern on it but she’d worn it for 75 years so that was long gone. I wore it for twenty years next to my own plan gold wedding ring but its edge was getting too thin. So for my 20th anniversary, I had it and my own ring combined, a thin silver line of platinum in the middle of the gold. They managed to not entirely erase the pattern. This year I’ll have been married 25 years and that little beat-up silver band, which still has a trace of a rose pattern, has celebrated marriage for 100 years.
For me, it’s got to be the mermaid necklace my mom bought for me right before I left for college. It was a hand-crafted piece with a really simple gold chain and the mermaid was two seperate pieces, the torso and the tail, connected by a small chain so that the tail swung back and forth, and she had a tiny pearl for her belly-button. My mom had picked it up at an art fair while she was on vacation in Arizona and she said she’d thought of me immediately.
It’s been my dream for at least 4 years to someday be a Weeki Wachee mermaid (look it up!) in Florida, and that was what I wanted to do after high school instead of going to college. My mom had never taken the idea seriously (I mean, I know it is a little silly, but whose dreams aren’t?) and my leaving for college at all was making me very grumpy at the time. We’d agreed that I would go for a year and then after I could do whatever I wanted, and I repeatedly had told her that what I was going to do next was be a mermaid, but every time she sort of just seemed to stop listening.
The mermaid necklace was gorgeous, but to me it was also a little sign from her that she had been listening and would really accept whatever I chose to do, as a person of my own and a young woman and not just as her daughter. I wore it every day for a year and loved it every second, and then it just disappeared in the airport one day when I was going home. I didn’t end up becoming a mermaid at the end of the year and I am still at school, but I’m still planning on doing it when I graduate and I miss that necklace so much it hurts. Sometimes when I see pictures of me wearing it I even get a little teary-eyed, it meant so much to me.
So, even though I don’t have it anymore, that was my most prized piece of jewelry.
The piece of jewelry that means the most to me is a ring my husband bought me to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. He doesn’t buy me things, so when he got this ring for me I knew it was special. He actually drove 100 miles into the city to pick it up. This from the man who doesn’t like to drive in traffic! We’ve been married for over 37 years with 4 wonderful kids, and 5 grandkids. My life is blessed.
The white-gold diamond engagement ring my father gave my mother…mom died 5 years ago this month and dad made it a week beyond their wedding anniversary that year before he followed.
a pair of jade and diamond earrings that were my mom’s. they’re a bit formal for me, so I don’t wear them often, but whenever I do I remember my mom (who recently passed away). also, I just ordered a silver heart necklace for a little bit of my mom’s ashes, I’m sure that will become a favorite piece of jewelry as well.