Charming

My sisters and I share a common, fond memory from our childhood.  We all loved, almost more than anything, to sit on our parent’s bed and look at my Mother’s charm bracelet.  Each charm was so intricate and tiny. 

When my parents were courting my Father bought my Mother a new silver charm each week.  Can you think of anything more romantic?  I can’t.  There is a little toaster were the toast actually goes up and down.  A little ladder that opens and closes.  A teeny book of matches that opens to reveal the matches within.  My sisters and I could spend hours laying on their bed looking at each charm.

Each of us covets that charm bracelet.  It sits in my Mother’s jewelry drawer, like it always did.  And we still pull it out and look at it now and then.  We don’t talk about it but at some point we are going to have to go through my Mother’s things and decide what to do with them.  There could be a big battle over that bracelet.  For now it is in my Father’s safe keeping.

When I was nine and living in Ankara, Turkey my Mother started a charm bracelet for me.  A good number of the charms are Turkish; the coffee urn with it’s evil eye, the whirling dervish.  Other charms have been collected on trips as souvenirs; a teeny cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, a thimble from the Fingerhut (thimble) Museum in Creglingen (which I have been to twice – once in 1970 and once in 1996).  I have tiny grand piano and a castle from Ireland.  There is a small medal of Pope Paul VI that was given to me in church and I told everyone the Pope himself had given it to me (the priest that handed it to me had a very official looking hat on, it was an honest mistake).

There are charms from American travels as well.  A bicycle from a trip to Cambria, CA (which has nothing to do with bicycles but the wheels moved and I had to have it).  A charm from Mount Rushmore and a little Tinkerbell from Disneyland. 

I’m out of room but not out of travels.  I’m going to have either start a new bracelet or start doubling up on the links.  I did start a gold charm bracelet but the charms are all hearts.  Plenty of room still left on that bracelet.  My plan is to buy heart charms as rewards for accomplishments.

The only non-heart charm on the bracelet is a little guardian angel my two sons gave me. 

My own sons liked looking at my charm bracelet but I don’t think they were as fascinated with it as I was my Mother’s.  Maybe it’s a girl thing.  Perhaps there will be granddaughters some day, that will sit on my bed and spend hours going over each charm and listening to the stories of where they came from.