A letter from a customer
My Granddaughter Pointed At My Wrist Before She Could Say A Proper Sentence
A small leather bracelet, three silver birds, and the thing a fifteen-month-old noticed before any adult did.
Nancy Brooks · Customer · Perth, WA
I was holding my granddaughter at her christening in June, the first time all three of my sons had been in the same room in almost two years, when she reached up, grabbed my wrist, and pointed at the bracelet rather than at any of the adults fussing over her.
My middle son laughed and said she has good taste. Everyone moved on to the next photograph, the way christenings carry you along from one small moment to the next without ever quite letting you stop on any of them. But I kept looking down at what she had pointed at, properly, for what I realised afterward was the first time in weeks of wearing it without thinking. Three small silver birds, sitting in a row on a leather cord, and I had somehow bought myself a picture of exactly what was standing in that room that day, without meaning to.
I do not know why a fifteen-month-old notices things the rest of us have trained ourselves out of noticing. But she did, and once she had, I could not stop seeing it either.
I did not buy it for that reason, and I want to be honest about that from the start, because I do not want you to think I am the sort of woman who shops for meaning. I ordered it on a Tuesday night, the way you order things at eleven o'clock when you should be asleep, because it was under forty dollars and I liked the look of it in the photograph. It sat in its little box on the hall table for two days before I even opened it properly, and I put it on for no occasion at all, the following Thursday, mostly because I was tired of seeing the box sitting there unopened.
For the first fortnight I genuinely forgot I had it on. That is not nothing, for me. I have a small collection of good jewellery that I am forever adjusting, tucking back into place, or taking off halfway through the day because it has started to bother me somewhere. This one simply disappeared onto my wrist the way a wedding ring does eventually, and I only really noticed it again because someone else did first.
What I noticed once I stopped forgetting I had it on
It is a double strand of soft brown leather rather than a chain, which I only appreciated properly once I realised I had stopped hearing it. No clinking against my coffee cup in the mornings, no catching on the loose knit of a cardigan sleeve the way my old charm bracelet always did. It simply sits there, warm against the skin within a minute or two of putting it on, the way a good pair of earrings does once you have had them a while and forgotten they are not actually part of your ear.
The three birds themselves are small and unassuming, a vintage silver tone rather than anything shiny or obviously new, and they do not arrive with a little card explaining what they are meant to represent. I have decided that is precisely the point. Nobody has ever needed it explained to them. My own sister, the first time she saw it properly, said quietly that it was her and our two brothers, our parents both gone now, the three of us the only ones left who remember the house we grew up in. My daughter-in-law, noticing it at the same christening, asked almost shyly whether it was meant to be her and her own two sisters back in Manila, whom she has not seen in over a year. It is not a fixed picture at all. It is simply three of something, and everyone who looks at it seems to already have their own three waiting to be found.
"I have never had a piece of jewellery that people ask about the way this one gets asked about. Everybody seems to already know who their three are before they've finished asking the question."
Margaret T., Fremantle, WA
I have a photograph on my hallway wall of the three boys, aged maybe seven, five, and three, sitting in a row on the back step in their school uniforms, squinting into the sun because their father always took photographs facing the wrong way. I walk past it most days without really seeing it any more, the way you stop seeing anything that has hung in the same spot for thirty years.
But the week after the christening, I stopped in front of it properly, for the first time in longer than I would like to admit, and I understood something I had not let myself think about directly before. Those three boys on the back step do not exist any more, not really. They exist as three grown men on three different continents, who I speak to mostly in short messages between time zones, and see, if I am fortunate, once every year or two, all together only ever by accident, the way a christening happens to fall on a weekend three flights can reach.
I am not telling you this to make you sad. I am telling you because I think most of us are quietly carrying some version of it, whether it is children who moved away, or a sister you have drifted from without meaning to, or a marriage that ended and left you still loving people you no longer see at Christmas. We do not talk about it much, because there is nothing to be done about it, and talking rarely helps. But wearing it, it turns out, is a different thing entirely. Nobody has to ask what is wrong. Nobody has to know anything is missing at all. You simply have it there, on your wrist, where you can feel it without having to explain it to anyone, including yourself.
My daughter-in-law found me in the kitchen afterward, after most of the guests had gone, drying glasses I did not need to be drying, and she put her hand over mine for a moment before taking the tea towel away from me gently. She did not say anything about the bracelet. She did not need to. She had already told me, an hour earlier, that it was her and her own two sisters, the ones she has not held in over a year, and I think she understood, without either of us saying it aloud, that I had been standing at that sink thinking about exactly the same kind of distance, just pointed in a different direction.
Three things I did not expect from a $40 bracelet
One. It does not compete with anything else I own. I am used to gold, mostly, three decades of birthdays and anniversaries have seen to that, and I fully assumed brown leather and silver would sit awkwardly next to it. It does not. It has worn alongside my wedding ring and my everyday watch for months now without once looking like the wrong decision, and I have started reaching for it on days I would once have reached for something considerably more expensive.
Two. The clasp actually works for a small wrist. Most cord bracelets I have owned are a fixed loop you fight with one-handed in front of a mirror, and mine have always ended up sitting loose no matter how I adjusted them, sliding round so the charm sits underneath rather than on top. This one has a proper lobster clasp with a short extender chain, so I fastened it myself in about four seconds standing in the kitchen, and it has stayed exactly where I want it, charm facing up, every single day since.
Three. It survived being forgotten about, which is the real test. I showered in it twice in the first month before I remembered I was probably not meant to. It has not tarnished, the leather has not gone stiff or cracked at the folds the way cheap cord sometimes does, and if anything it looks a little softer and more settled now than it did the day it arrived.
"I am terrible with jewellery, I lose earrings and snap chains within a month. This is the first thing I have worn daily for half a year without a single mark on it."
Josephine R., Bunbury, WAAbout the price, plainly
It was $79.99. It is $39.99 now, and that gap was the first thing that made me suspicious rather than the thing that convinced me. I have been caught before by a good photograph and a steep discount, so I read the reviews properly before I let myself order it, rather than afterward the way I usually do when I am already attached to something.
It comes from Cute Home, a small outfit out of Melbourne, and their own explanation is that selling directly online rather than through a jewellery counter is where the saving comes from, that there is no shop rent and no middle markup sitting between them and the person actually wearing it. I cannot verify their arithmetic, and I am not in the business of taking a company's word for anything without checking. What I can tell you, from my own experience rather than theirs, is that mine has been on my wrist since June, through two long-haul flights, a Perth winter, and more washing up than I would like to admit, and it shows no sign whatsoever of wanting to come off.
What it became, once I understood what I had bought
I have since sent two more, one to each of my daughters-in-law, without any real explanation beyond a note that said I thought they might like it. Neither of them asked what the birds meant. Both of them, separately, sent me a photograph of it on their own wrist within a week, which told me they had already decided for themselves, the same way I had, the same way my sister had.
That is the part I did not expect from a $40 bracelet bought on a whim on a Tuesday night. Not that it would hold up, though it has. Not that it would suit everything, though it does. But that it would end up meaning something to three separate households on three separate continents without a single one of us ever agreeing in advance on what that meaning was.
"My mother-in-law sent me one out of nowhere. I did not ask what it meant, I just knew, and I have not taken it off since."
A note from Nancy's daughter-in-law, shared with permissionWhat I would tell you over a cup of tea
I would not tell you this bracelet changes anything important, because it genuinely does not. Nobody is closer to Singapore or London for my having a picture of three birds on my wrist, and I am under no illusion about that. But I would tell you that at some point in your sixties you stop expecting small, inexpensive things to mean anything at all, and then a fifteen-month-old points at your wrist before she can properly say a sentence, and you remember that they still can, if you let them.
If there is a small group of people you carry around in your head without ever quite finding a proper way to say so out loud, this has turned out to be a quiet way of wearing them instead. Not instead of calling them, or visiting, or any of the things I still do not do often enough. Just a small, additional way, worn on the one part of me that is almost always in view.
— Nancy
If any of this sounds familiar, here is the exact piece Nancy is wearing. It ships from Melbourne, arrives ready to give if you decide to pass it on, and comes with the same 30-day guarantee she read through before she let herself order it.
Vintage Bird Rope Bracelet
- Three-bird charm in a vintage silver tone
- Soft double leather cord, light and silent on the wrist
- Lobster clasp with extender chain, fits any wrist
- Wears alone or stacked with a watch and other bracelets
- Lovely as a gift, and arrives ready to give
- Free Australia-wide delivery with tracking
The current sale price reflects a limited restock. Once this batch sells through, it returns to full price.
Nancy Brooks lives in Perth, WA. She is a customer, not a jewellery writer, and was not paid to write this letter.
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