Choose Dearests, Choose

GEMS FOREVER
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

As a child, looking through my parents' album collection
I was always drawn to this treasure chest: Gems Forever!

"1962 - Boise"
That's my mom's handwriting, perhaps
when she bought the album for my dad.

I was only 4 at the time, but I can remember her
wearing the sandstone jewelry when we lived in Idaho.

The sparkly set was added a few years later,
when we lived in Neosho and I was 8 or 9.

Still in their original box;
it says "Priscilla" on the inside & "Floyd's" on the outside.

My mother's necklaces make me think of Virginia Woolf's lovely description in To the Lighthouse of the children rummaging around in Mrs. Ramsay's jewelry box:

"And if Rose liked . . . she might choose which jewels she was to wear.

" . . .Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs. Ramsay absent-mindedly . . . And then, while the children rummaged among her things . . .

"But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?

" 'Choose, dearests, choose,' " she said, hoping that they would make haste.

"But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly, take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and Jasper, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl. Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so."

(120 - 123, emphasis added)
[And thanks to my friend and fellow scholar
Victoria for sharing my reading of this passage]

[Read more about Virginia Woolf:
Fortnightly ~ Quotidian ~ Kitti's List]

***************

Additional Connections

In "The Diamond Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant,
Mme. Jeanne Forestier says to Mme. Mathilde Loisel:
"Choose, my dear."

In "Wild Montana Skies"
John Denver & Emmylou Harris
sing of the conflicted, contemplative character who
was born with the blessing / curse of deep feeling and
" . . . never knew the answers
that would make an easy way . . . "
[kind of like "Rose, who was bound to suffer so"]

In one of my 4th - grade favorites,
Ginnie and the Mystery Doll by Catherine Woolley,
Ginnie and Geneva follow the trail of a long - lost antique doll,
a recently painted portrait of the doll, a red Jaguar,
and -- a missing jewel! -- a conch pearl.

I took a couple of hours to re-read this childhood classic, and was touched by Ginnie's similarity to Rose:

"Ginnie gave a sad little sigh. This was the best, the most beautiful part of the day. The air felt cool when she sat up, but the sand still held the day's warmth and the wind had dropped. A path of molten gold led straight across the silken water to the setting sun." (45)

"The summer days were slipping along now. Ginnie treasured every one. As the summer had advanced, a new world had come into being for her -- the world at the edge of the sea. . . . So, each new day unfolded its own lovely pattern. Ginnie hugged every one to her heart." (83, 85)

As with Rose, Ginnie "loved anything resembling a story" but every now and again she had "the strange sensation [of being] alone in a hostile world" (111, 117).

Need I say it? Bound to suffer so.

Previous Fortnightly Posts in this series
Re: Jewel, Rainbow, Splendor
Heirloom Jewelry
Diamond Studs Are Forever
AND MORE

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, July 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Mantovani Christmas
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Diamond Studs Are Forever

DIAMONDS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Thanks to Intersoul for Sound & Graphic

Visual connection: Imitation of Life opening credits, 1959
Sound connection: Shirley Bassey

Long ago (Christmas 1991), when Gerry and I brought Baby Ben to England for the first time, my tiny diamond earring got lost at O'Hare when we were waiting for our flight. The story has become legendary in our family. As previously recounted on The Quotidian Kit ~ May 20, 2013:

The first [diamond that I lost] was a small stud, embedded in the carpet at O'Hare, where my little Ben (age 1 1/2 at the time . . . ) clutched my earlobe in a moment of excitement. When he let go, the diamond was not in my ear, nor in his hand, nor anywhere on the chair or floor as far as we could see. We shook out my hair and clothing to no avail. I treasured these earrings because they had been my first ever Christmas present from Gerry.

Now, one of them was missing, but suddenly it was time for boarding, and I had to walk away; like Lot's wife, I looked over my shoulder! I don't think Ben really understood what had transpired, but he knew that it was something we had not expected. For months afterward, he would reach out to pat my ear and say, "More Mummy earring?" Ah, what's a lost diamond compared to that kind of sweetness? Besides, Gerry soon surprised me with a new set -- to this day, not yet lost! -- so I still have a pair and a spare.

Here's the mate to the missing one, that I still have:

But wait! There's more! As coincidence would have it, you just NEVER know when a ring or an earring might be lost or found. Did I ever see my special little Christmas stud again? No. However, flash forward to Summer 2019 when Ben and Cathleen were flying to Portugal -- and try to guess what they found stuck in the carpet at O'Hare? Let's hope not the same carpet (after 30 years?) and definitely not the same earring, but -- Yes! -- a diamond stud!

They sent me this photo with the caption:
"More Mommy Earring?"

THEN they found another one on the way home!
What's the odds?

I now wear the two that they found as a set, even though they are not quite the same. They surely belong together, as ordained by the Diamond Gods!

And 5 years later,
this one came into my life,
stuck in the carpet of my hotel room
in Kirksville, Missouri ~ October 2024
The diamonds come and go . . .

Quick Aside Re Synchronicity: I knew my sisters would love this story, because our lives are filled with synchronicity. My sister Peg said that these diamond discoveries must derive from some kind of brain pattern theory, "but it's so much more magical to hear it as a random, wonderful coincidence. I'm excited to see where I confront this phenomenon in the next few days, because that is so often how it happens!" Certainly that's how it works with vocabulary words; as my literary friend Laura explained: "I really enjoyed your discussion with your sisters of that uncanny sense, once one learns a new word, of suddenly seeing it everywhere. A good friend told me it's called the Baader-Meinhof effect -- hope naming it doesn't remove any of its uncanny power." Nope, naming merely adds to the magic!

But getting back to those diamonds, sometimes they are not real. What happens then? Remember Luisa in Act One of The Fantasticks? She is a heroine so hopeful and pure - hearted, it hardly matters, diamonds or rhinestones:
El Gallo:
She has a glue paste necklace,
which she thinks is really real.

Luisa:
I found it in the attic, with my mother's name inside.
It is my favorite possession.

El Gallo:
It's her fancy.

Luisa:
It's my pride. . . .

Act Two

El Gallo:
Oh, yes. I steal fancies.
I steal whatever is treasured most. . . .

(Looking at her necklace.)
Precious rhinestones.

Luisa:
Rhinestones?

El Gallo:
Can be precious.
It depends on the point of view. . . .
Wait! Give me a trinket –
to pledge that you will come back.
That necklace –

Luisa: Was my mother’s.

El Gallo: Good. It will serve as your pledge.

(He holds out his hand. She considers, then
removes necklace and places it gently in his hand.)

Luisa:
All right. I leave you this necklace
because it is my favorite thing.
Here, guard it. I won’t be long. . . .

*****

Lyrics by Tom Jones (b. 1928)
Music by Harvey Schmidt (1929 - 2018)
Sung by Jerry Orbach (1935 - 2005;
the original El Gallo, from 1959 - 61,
at the Sullivan Street Playhouse)

*********************

A few more jewel - themed stories to contemplate:
Master of the short story, Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893) experimented with both scenarios: fake jewels believed to be real and real jewels believed to be fake. I won't say which story is which; you have to read them both:

The Diamond Necklace & The Jewelry

and this one
by Henry James (1843 - 1916): Paste

James doubles up on both the irony and the betrayal in his intrigue of a mysterious family jewel box, filled with a combination of treasures and trinkets that, unlike diamonds, may or may not be forever. In his story, it is a string of pearls that deceive and delight. Are they dull or lustrous? Paste or genuine? Fancy or pride?

Next Fortnightly Post ~ More jewels to come!
Wednesday, June 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com