My Grandmother’s Pearls

I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like…. It’s like Tiffany’s…. Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. But it’s tacky to wear diamonds before you’re forty…
~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
(spoken by the character Holly Golightly)

Last weekend, I wore my grandmother’s pearls. They were given to me by my mother before I left for San Francisco in August, with the reminder that both my grandparents were watching over me in spirit.

I turned thirty-eight in August, but I don’t feel like I’m old enough to wear pearls on a regular basis, yet. I love that I have them. I love the weight of them, and the satisfying click they make when the individual pearls knock against each other on their wire. I sigh happily at the way they feel cool when they first touch my skin, but I feel like they don’t quite belong to me yet, like I haven’t earned them.

There is no doubt that my grandmother earned them.

She raised four children, cooked countless numbers of meatballs, gave all her daughters and granddaughters a love of tradition, art, beauty, and music, mixed with an appreciation of earthier things: a strong sun-browned hand to touch, and perfect taste of a home-grown tomato, the delicate presence of an African violet – the only flower that can turn purple into a shy color.

There is no doubt that they are lovely.

They are soft pearls, the patina of age tinting them slightly green to the discerning eye. The clasp is decorated with seed pearls and diamond chips (I don’t know if these are real, and I do not care – they’re pretty, which is all that matters.). They retain the barest trace of my grandmother’s perfume, though that could merely be my imagination.

But I don’t quite belong to them, yet, or they with me.

Soon, maybe. When I’m forty, when I’m fifty, I’ll be able to wear them more often, and feel like I’ve grown into them, instead of – like the child playing dress-up with her old auntie’s tiaras and furs – expecting someone to tell me to take them off, give them back.

Until then, I take them out to hold them, to feel the weight of the pearls themselves, and the history they witnessed, the love and hope and fear and joy. And even though I can’t quite wear them with ease…

I love that I have them.

Tags: Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cafe Writing, December, November, Pearls, Timed Writing, Truman Capote