14. Charmed. I’m Sure
Rewriting my life in silver
originally posted 4/12/07
Bloggers and Bloggettes;
This morning as I was brushing my teeth my day’s idea came to me. I write in many different forms. One is in silver. This is my story.
One day in the early 1950’s, my parents took me on a subway ride to the Bronx (one of the 5 “boroughs of New York City: Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan are the five boroughs and are largely residential.”) Part of the train ride is elevated and it is a kick for a young child to kneel backwards in her seat and look out the window.
We were going to visit my aunt Ina, my mother’s sister. At that time she had a daughter and a son. Neither of them were home when we were there. My aunt and her family lived in a development called “Parkchester,” which, like “Stuyvesant Town,” where I grew up in lower Manhattan, was a post WWII development. Apartments filled quickly in these huge middle class developments as the vets needed a home after the war. These inclusive communities were owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They looked very much the same.
There was lots of grass around the one hundred or so buildings, walks, flowers in the spring, and an “oval” with fountains to cool off around in the summer. Hundreds of kids of all backgrounds hung out together in and around the many playgrounds. But Parkchester had an interesting intriguing extra; statues of the WPA chubby ilk, hanging off the corners of many of the buildings. They were mostly 11 story, reddish pink buildings with pink terracotta-ish figures adorning the corners in 50’s gargoyle fashion.
So, now you can see me approaching my aunt Ina’s house. I am with my parents, maybe 6 years old, and descending the stairs of the elevated train, walking on a warm spring day under trees.
As children have a limited sense of time and sequence, and as memory sometimes rewrites itself, I will do the best I can to describe this life changing event.
My aunt approached me in slow motion with her hands outstretched, offering me a gift. Most of the things I received as a child were hand-me-downs from older cousins. Here was the first I could recall. From my cousin, Barbara: a clear plastic purse that could snap securely shut. In it were several plastic charms. One was a frankfurter in a bun. Perfectly painted and a miniature of what we would eat on Sundays at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, on the boardwalk. I don’t remember the other plastic charms. I only remember the silver bracelet. A charm bracelet. I think there were 4 charms but I only recall two: a little scissors that opened and closed, and a disc in a frame, it’s called a “spinner,” that had code-like writing on the front and back. It sat in the frame securely enough to be held at two points so when blown on it would spin and while doing so the code was read by the mind’s need for gestalt: I LOVE YOU.
If you are a girl I am sure you can identify with this. If you are a boy, just think of that bracelet as a baseball card collection. Close your eyes and feel the return to the point in your childhood among a myriad of infinite points. Remember the best thing you ever got. How your heart pounded in excitement and maybe even fear. You didn’t know what to do with yourself. You knew you had a treasure.
I acquired a few treasures over my childhood and I kept them safe. I inherited my cousin Pamela’s doll house. It sat on the window sill in my room which I was soon to share with my newborn sister. It was made of printed aluminum; the façade faced out to the endless thousands of apartment windows looking back at mine. I could enter the house and live in it, between its little walls, in its little draperied rooms. It came with two miniature candlesticks and a teensy round, squat vessel that had a lid. Heaven! The lid came off, snapped back on.
I had a tiny cactus plant growing on my window sill near the doll house. I mean tiny. The pot was maybe an inch tall and the plant was small and spiny, and must have been happy as it shot up a thin prickly shoot.
I began a comic book and Mad Magazine collection; as they accrued—Little LuLu, Richie Rich,
Classic Comics, and of course my beloved Archies—Betty and Veronica, Jughead, they found a home under my bed in a carton. I loved this stuff. It wasn’t much but it meant a lot to me. It helped me survive a pretty gray colored childhood. My stuff was my escape.
But now I must digress to a painful topic. One day I came home from school and the bracelet was gone. One day I came home from school and the doll house and the little snap-shut vessel were gone. One day I came home from school and the cactus with the funny shoot was gone.
One day I came home from school and the box was gone. No more Alfred E. Newman, or my best friends, Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and Reggie. Nope. They left and took Little LuLu and Tubby with them.
We had a fire! Everything was destroyed. It was started by a careless match from my father’s cigars. It obliterated the apartment and everything in it. I was no longer a child and I was no longer safe. I was forever scarred by soot and smoke.
But I am lying.
There was no fire. There was not a smudge of soot. There was my mother. She felt I didn’t need these things anymore. The cactus was “ugly.” She said she gave everything including my comics to The Salvation Army. They could never save anyone the way they saved me. So I will pull a few words from the previous paragraph: I was no longer a child and I was no longer safe. I was forever scarred.
Years later as an adult, I went into every antique store I could, looking for my bracelet. I even took a job in a place that sold antique and vintage jewelry after my regular job, in hopes that someone would bring my bracelet in. Or it would be waiting for me in a showcase or a drawer. Well, you know, we all have fantasies.
You are probably thinking about how I reacted. I was numb and accepted what I was told. Like a good daughter. I didn’t confront my mother but I did ask her to explain her behavior.
Her response was, “my mother did it to me.”
It was time to take action. In January 2005, so many years later, I was a fairly new member of ebay and was finding my way around as I am here. I did a search for vintage charms; up they came! Hundreds, thousands of charms. And there were the scissors! And the I LOVE YOU spinner! They were there and more!
I decided it was time to let it all go and rewrite my own bracelet. Every bracelet is a poem, some dramatic, some funny, all tell a story. I have made about twenty-five of them. I have many bracelet-less charms in boxes that are waiting to be introduced, to meet up with some new cronies, and tell a tale.
The lost bracelet was that of a little girl. The bracelet redux is for the adult who can now look back and make her life richer the way she wants it, the way she would like to remember it.
When you rewrite your own bracelet, no one can take it away.
The above childhood bracelet-redux includes:
a New York State shield;
Happy Birthday cake that opens to a candle;
a pensive little child;
a disc that says “Susie;”
initial S;
a toddler’s push-bike, no pedals’
a roller skate;
a telephone—our number was Oregon 3-9833;
a clock—time passes;
a piano—there is a cat inside!—it represents the piano my next door neighbor got; I was so jealous I hid in the closet for days and cried. I wanted to learn Moonlight Sonata;
the I LOVE YOU spinner;
my first and last 2-wheeler bike;
a little ice cream cart that opens to 2 flavors, red and green—a heart and a shamrock;
a pencil that writes;
an eraser for all of my life’s mistakes;
a book that opens to a bookworm inside;
a train, representing the subway we took every weekend, twice a weekend to Brighton Beach;
a camera, I was the daughter of a photographer and loved to take pictures. It has a blue enamel “watch the birdie” inside;
a chaise lounge with an umbrella for the beach;
the lost cactus in a pot;
an artist’s palette;
a tv that opens; there’s a tv camera inside;
a mailbox; I was an avid letter writer;
a heart that says I Love you; I had discovered boys;
a ‘70’s looking I LOVE YOU;
a little scorpio sign;
a stave of rock & roll music; my main “stave”(one thing my mother did not dump was my collection or 45 rpm’s. Unfortunately the albums went. So long, “Dion and the Belmonts;”
a phonograph player that opens;
and it ends with my 1966 graduation from High School.
My youth has been rewritten.
Some of the bracelets I made, these with an Italian theme;
Italy is my favorite place.
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absynthedeath wrote on Oct 20, ’07
WOW! That story made me cry! I remember losing my favorite things that kept me safe! My mom did the same thing to me at a few points in my life.
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lauritasita wrote on Oct 21, ’07
If it makes you feel any better, mom threw out all my artwork. She said she didn’t have room for it anymore. Sniff.
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This is a wonderful inspiring story. Beautifully written. Something we all can relate to one way or another. This has convinced me,personally, to leave this site and get on Ebay and create my own story. I must say, the bracelets themselves are gorgeous, usually the link on link but these filigree ones are wonderful. I’m off…to visit ebay. Thank you for this.
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How did I miss this blog of yours, sister? it is one of the most powerful you wrote. My father did the same to my things, and I have never been able to forgive him, not even after his death. In a way you have been luckier, thanks to e-Bay and your forgiveness. I was never able to rebuild my doll’s paper house I had taken great pains designing and cutting out, nor my early artworks or my junior poetry. I piece of me gone forever. I still feel the pain of severance.
Fantastic work of art!