girls and jewelry

When I was Sarah's age, and even younger, I used to love to look through my Grammy's jewelry box. I can still hear her voice telling me, "Oh, it's just junk", meaning she didn't think anything in there was valuable. To me, it was like looking through a treasure box. I'm guessing her jewelry was mostly from the 1950's, probably some from earlier, some from later.

She kept her jewelry box in the middle bedroom on the second floor of her house. It sat on a low table, next to the fold-out sofa bed where I slept when I spent the night. I would kneel in front of the box and pick up each piece, marveling at how pretty each was. I remember being enthralled with her clip-on earrings. Grammy never had her ears pierced, but mine were. I would match up all the pairs and take my pierced earrings off and try on her clip-ons.

Fast forward thirty years.

The jewelry box came to me when my Grammy passed away. I have it stored in a drawer of an old chest of drawers that was covered and unaccessible.... until our basement was finished a few weeks ago. On Sunday afternoon I pulled open the drawers and went through each one, showing Sarah all the mementos that are stored in there.

Guess what caught her attention. Yup, Grammy's jewelry box.

My Aunt labeled a lot of the pieces and matched up earrings with necklaces before passing it on to me. Sarah got everything out. And I smiled when she matched up all the clip-on earrings like I used to do so long ago. She doesn't have pierced ears, so it was fun for her to see what it could look like if she did. She tried on a few. These were always my favorite....

And Sarah loved the big butterfly pin...

I told her that someday the jewelry box and all its treasures would be hers. And maybe another thirty years down the line another little girl, Grammy's great great granddaughter, can marvel at all the sparkly jewels.