28 May 1999: Necklaces

Knowledge is Wealth.
Share It.

 

line doodleI made a stained-glass window for RDC with the crayons and the tablecloth at Macaroni Grill. Coloring it reminded me, as do so many things, of how linear I am and often hate being. I was explaining to him my usual doodle, which I now do in the dated squares of my calendar during staff meetings and did previously, while taking notes, in a ruled section of my notepaper. Then I started to color it with no other principle in mind than that no segment should be the same color as an adjoining one, and no pattern, and got my stained glass look. Thinking outside the box I was, at least while coloring, except the doodle itself is a box.

About the necklace my mother gave me. I like it, I want to wear it, and that's weird. My mother has never given me anything about which I feel strongly, at least not in years and years and nothing as omnipresent as a necklace. You know, besides my life.

I've worn the bangle my father gave me for almost twelve years now. I take it off to swim and to do step, and now, to rollerblade. My mother's necklace--I can see it becoming near-daily wear, although I wouldn't sleep in it. That bothers me because it displaces the two pendants I have worn, diurnally anyway, since 1990 and 1992.

In the fall of 1990 at a Renaissance Fair(e) I bought a silver Tigger pendant, Shephard not Disney of course. He's sitting, not bouncing, and he hangs from a narrow silver box chain. I wore him constantly until the winter of 1991-1992, when I broke the chain in my sleep. This was another reason for me to hate myself, and after I replaced the chain at the Hoot, I didn't sleep in it anymore. Tigger is my personal talisman.

In the summer of 1992, I looked at the work of a jeweler friend of mine during a weekend whose course marked the conscious end of a bad spell in my life. A pendant I bought became the tangible marker of that end. (The jeweler was willing to sell it to me for half his intended price, which he could ill afford to do. That was important too [nearly three years later, I sent him a check for the balance, which startled him rather].)

I wore that silver and amethyst pendant on the Tigger chain for a few weeks, until I found its own chain in a shop in Provincetown. The Provincetown trip itself was a marker, RDC's and my first roadtrip together. I also bought a beautiful silver barrette there with a dryad on it, which RDC approved of as another frippery to encourage me growing my hair (and the next weekend at another Ren Fair, he bought me another hair frippery, a twisted silver hair pin, from the same jeweler I bought the second pendant from--the great circle of life, or the sequiturs of lisa's conversation).

So Tigger, representing me, and Billy's pendant, representing me reclaiming myself, have been my everyday necklaces. Not always, and not always together, but usually.

Now there's this new thing. It's more flattering. It's less clunky--I stopped sleeping in the big pendant when I started sleeping with RDC because it bonked him on the nose or nearly chipped a tooth or something. The new thing goes with more stuff. Well and good.

It doesn't mean as much to me, though; I have no emotion invested in it. My rings and bracelets and necklaces have all been portmanteaux before (not earrings though, which is how I could wear New and Different earrings to get married in), and now this?

But shouldn't I allow something from my mother to mean as much to me as the bangle from my father and the engagement ring from my grandmother? After all I wouldn't've worn my father's gift unless I found it aesthetically pleasing (and I did: I had picked it out). And I wore my grandmother's despite its not being my usual thing.

So whatever. I'm wearing it. Only diurnally, and not even in the house because of Blake, but I'm wearing it.

 

Go to previous or next, the Journal Index, Words, or the Lisa Index

Last modified 3 June 1999

Speak your mind: lisa[at]penguindust[dot]com

Copyright © 1999 LJH