My mother's good jewellery is in a box in the wardrobe. The thing I wear every day cost thirty-nine dollars.
Six things I have worked out about the jewellery we keep and the jewellery we actually put on. They are almost never the same jewellery.
Nancy Brooks · Customer · Melbourne, VIC · 5 min read
When Mum died I was given her jewellery box. A proper one, the kind with a little key that has been lost since about 1986. Her engagement ring is in it, and a gold chain she had from her twenty-first, and a brooch I can remember on the front of her good coat.
I have never worn any of it. Not once, in nine years. It lives on the shelf in the wardrobe above the winter things, and every so often I take it down and go through it and put it back, and that is the whole extent of it.
I used to think that was about grief. I have come round to thinking it is simpler than that, and a bit sadder. The things are too good. They are too good to wear to the shops, too good to garden in, too good to risk on a wrist that puts its hands in dishwater eight times a day. So they get kept. And keeping is not the same as having.
What I actually wear is a leather bracelet with three birds on it that cost thirty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. Six things about why.
The good things are too good to wear, so they are never worn
This is the trap and almost nobody names it. A piece has to be valuable enough to matter and cheap enough to forget about, and those two things pull in opposite directions. Mum's chain is worth something, so it stays in the box. My own good pieces stay in the drawer for the same reason. Meanwhile the thing that gets worn every day is the one I would be annoyed about losing rather than devastated. That is not a lesser kind of jewellery. On the evidence of nine years, it is the only kind that does the job.
"I have a drawer of nicer things and this is the only one I actually put on."
It says the thing a locket used to say
Women of my mother's generation had a way of carrying people about with them. A locket with two small photographs in it, a ring that had been somebody's. We have rather lost that. Most jewellery now is decoration, which is to say it is pretty and it means nothing and nobody asks. This is a small picture of three birds sitting together on a branch, and every woman who has looked at it has immediately decided who the three of them are. My sister decided it was us and Mum. I had not said a word. Nobody has ever needed it explained.
"My daughter took one look and said 'that's us three'. She was right and I had not said anything."
It is light enough that it never comes off
Anything you have to take off is a thing you will eventually stop putting on. That is how the wardrobe shelf gets filled. This weighs close to nothing, it does not slide down your forearm when you type, and it does not knock against the desk or the table. I stopped noticing it by the second day. I take it off to shower and that is all, and there have been mornings I have forgotten to put it back on and felt oddly wrong about it until I did.
"So light I forget it is there. I have slept in it more than once without meaning to."
You stop being frightened of it, which is the whole freedom
I garden in this. I do the washing up in it. It has been to the beach at Point Lonsdale and it went to a funeral in March. It is a double strand of soft leather and an aged silver charm, and the honest truth is that if it were lost tomorrow I would be cross for an afternoon and then order another one. I cannot tell you what a relief that is after nine years of a box I am frightened to open properly. Wearing a thing without watching it is a small freedom and I did not know I wanted it.
"No noise, no catching, no green wrist. I have worn it every day since October."
It sits happily with the rings I never take off
I have my wedding band and Mum's engagement ring on the other hand, both gold, and that has ruled out a great deal over the years. Silver has always looked like an argument next to them. Brown leather and aged silver turns out to be the most forgiving pairing there is. It does not fight the gold, it does not clash with a watch, and it looks equally right against a linen shirt in February or a cardigan in July. That is the first time I have been able to wear Mum's ring and something of my own without one of them looking wrong.
"I stack it with my watch most days. Suits my silver and my gold, which nothing else of mine does."
What actually gets handed on is not the box
Here is where I have ended up, and it took nine years. My daughters will get Mum's jewellery box one day and they will do exactly what I have done with it, which is keep it. That is fine. That is what a box is for. But what they will actually remember is the thing that was on my wrist every time they saw me, the way I remember Mum's brooch on the front of her coat and could not tell you one thing about anything in that box. It was never the value that made me remember the brooch. It was that she wore it.
"I wear it every day. My good things sit in a box and always will."
One honest note before the price
Given everything above, I had better be plain about this. It is not fine jewellery and it is not meant to be. Leather and a silver-toned charm, not sterling, and nobody is putting it in a box for their daughters. Keep it out of the shower and out of the pool, the way you would with any leather, and it will last you. If you want an heirloom, buy an heirloom, and then put it on the shelf with the others. This is the other thing. This is the one you wear.
The jewellery we keep, against the jewellery we wear
I went through Mum's box again in the winter and worked out, finally, why none of it has ever been on me. It is not sentiment. It is these five things.
- Too valuable to wear to the shops
- Watched all day rather than forgotten
- Taken off for the garden, the pool, the washing up
- Lovely, and it says nothing to anybody who sees it
- Lives in a box and is looked at twice a year
- Cheap enough to stop thinking about
- Light enough that you forget it by day two
- Leather and silver tone, so it goes where you go
- Three birds that everybody reads their own way
- Lives on your wrist, which is where it does any good
About the price
It is $39.99, down from $79.99. I want to be careful here, because I am not going to stand next to my mother's engagement ring and tell you a thirty-nine dollar bracelet is worth more. It is not. It is worth thirty-nine dollars.
What I will say is this. The ring has been worn by me for nine years, on the hand, because it is a ring and I could not bear to put it away. Everything else in that box has been worn for nought days. This bracelet has been on somewhere near two hundred. If you divide what a thing costs by the number of days it is actually on you, the answer is not the one the price tag suggests, and it has not been close.
If you have a box on a shelf you never open and nothing on your wrist most days, this is the small thing I would put on it. Not instead of hers. As well.
— Nancy
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About the writer. Nancy Brooks lives in Melbourne, VIC. She writes occasionally about the small things she has actually kept using. She is not affiliated with Cute Home beyond being a customer.
This page is an advertisement for Cute Home. Nancy's letter is shared with her permission. Cute Home · An Australian start-up from Melbourne · Free Australia-wide delivery · 30-day money back guarantee.