Tag Archives: treasures

Apr9

Pearls Of Great Price

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There are many kinds of value…

I love jewelry.  I have loved it since I was a little girl.  My earliest memory of wearing a piece of jewelry is the time Mama put a little heart necklace on me when she got me all gussied up in a dress no doubt made by Aunt Ruby for some Pixie Pin-Ups pictures.

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Ever since then I’ve been hooked on all kinds of jewelry.  Gold, silver, (rose gold is a real favorite!), with gemstones or not, rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces are all fair game for me.  From the daintiest studs to enormous earrings, as fashions have changed over the years, I have experimented with different jewelry styles.  But there are some items that are classic, timeless, always right, always appropriate and always ladylike.  Like pearls.

As far as I know, Mama never owned a strand of genuine pearls, but she had good pearl earrings that I borrowed for dressy occasions until I received some pearl earrings of my very own.  For Christmas 1991, my sweet husband gave me a beautiful, luminous 18 inch “princess” length strand of pearls.  I was thrilled!  To this day I think they are the prettiest pearls I’ve ever seen.  I wear them for dressy occasions and, because pearls are part of my chorus’s concert attire, I wear them for concerts as well.

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And sometimes I wear them with casual clothes just because they are beautiful and I love them.  However I wear them, I take good care of them because natural and cultured pearl jewelry is expensive and I want them to stay as beautiful as they always have been. Someday I’ll be gone and someone will inherit my pearls along with my other belongings.  I hope that someone will receive as much pleasure from wearing them as I receive.

The most recent addition to my pearl collection is not of the expensive sort…but its value is beyond measure.  When Aunt Ruby died last August, my cousin Alan had the family gather at his house after the graveside service.  He mentioned that he had her old sewing machine out in his garage and asked if I wanted to poke around in the drawers.  I asked if everybody else had been through them and he said, “Yes, there’s not much of anything in there.”  So I had the chance to gather a few little treasures from Aunt Ruby’s sewing machine.  I took home a couple of little boxes not knowing what all they contained until I sat down for an afternoon of “pilfering” (what Mama used to call it when we went digging/rummaging/hunting for something).  In a tiny old-fashioned medicine bottle were a few random fasteners, the snap kind that Aunt Ruby put on housecoats, as well as a couple of sewing machine needles, the kind that served double duty as ear-piercing instruments.  And there was one small plastic “pearl” button.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she had used the other buttons like that on one of the many little-girl dresses she made for me.

What a treasure!  And I knew just how to use that solitary little button.  It now lives on the gold pin that holds my Confidence Charms, the talismans I wear for every important event in my life. It has found a perfect home there.

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Just a little plastic pearl button, not what could be considered valuable…but it’s priceless.

Feb10

Long Life

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Prophetic treasures and simple pleasures as Valentine’s Day approaches…

As I have asserted before, I am a collector, of objects and of memories.  Gathering has been a lifelong pursuit for me, and each object I have found (or received) and kept has a story.  Some of my collections are large. I own more neckties than most men I know, for example, and most of them are outrageously colorful, ugly or interesting in some way.  And yes, I actually wear them, usually styled with a tailored shirt, a vest and girly jewelry. The Necktie Collection deserves to be displayed in an art museum, but it will have to settle for its own entry on Patchwork And Potpourri at some future date. Be on the lookout for that!

My collections include figurines of angels, dogs and pigs.  I have collections of baskets and wreaths.  A favorite wreath, heart-shaped and made of grapevine, contains dried flowers from weddings I have sung for, funerals of loved ones, flowers I have received from Sweet Pea and other friends and loved ones, and flowers I’ve sent to Sweet Pea over the years.  Of course, there are also the hymnals and Bibles that came to me from Mama and other forebears, as well as treasure boxes filled with priceless cards, letters and pictures.  I must be the most sentimental person in the world.  Each item I have received or found has a story behind it, a reason why it belongs with me.

Someday when I am gone from this world, someone may wonder why I kept so much…stuff.  Part of what I hope to accomplish with Patchwork And Potpourri is to explain my collections, and to make other people contemplate their own, and share the stories behind the stuff.  Hence Longlife.

When Sweet Pea and I returned from our honeymoon, he immediately went back to work at his job, and I set about unpacking and setting up our very humble little household.  Cardboard boxes filled our tiny rental house, which to us seemed like a palace even though it was really sort of a dump.  We made it home and filled it with love as newlyweds always do.  The first day of married reality when he went to work and I started unpacking, I was thirsty. It was the end of June, 1986, record heat and no air conditioning.  We had stocked the fridge and pantry and started getting the kitchen in order, but I didn’t know which box contained the glasses.  I checked boxes and scrounged around the kitchen to find something to pour my icy-cold Mello Yello into so I could fuel myself for the day’s work.  In a corner of the counter I saw a grimy old pint-sized Mason jar.  Just the right size for my frosty beverage once I cleaned it up! 

Unlike the Mason jars Mama and The Aunts used for canning their green beans and tomatoes, this little jar did not bear the name of Ball or Kerr.  It was stamped “Longlife”.  Long life.  What a wonderful omen for a newlywed couple starting life together in their first little rental house, filled with love and dreams and optimism.  I cleaned out my new little jar, filled it with my bubbly beverage of choice and began unpacking our life together, one box at a time. 

So someday, when I am gone, someone may wonder why, among the china, silver and crystal, a humble Longlife Mason jar has a place of honor in the china cabinet from Mom Cutshaw’s house.  These days I don’t drink from it very often. I usually use a larger, lidded 32-ounce bottle to make sure I consume enough liquid each day, and I keep the lid on to avoid spills because I am a bit clumsy.  And, truthfully, I don’t want to risk breaking my precious little jar, again, because I am clumsy.  It means more to me than I could ever explain.  I hope someday, now that I have told its story, it will mean just as much to someone else.

Longlife…long life. 

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