Sweet February Sixth

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor, my dad's mother.  The name "Farmor" in Danish means "father's mother"--so a Danish person could have four grandparents with distinct names: a Farmor, a Farfar, a Mormor, and a Morfar, instead of two Grandmas and two Grandpas.  Unless they have a "Bedstefar" and "Bedstemor" in there--these are more generic "Grandma" and "Grandpa"-type names.  But I digress.

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor.  I can remember sitting on the couch in her TV room with her one day when she was very sick with lung cancer--she had to bring an oxygen tank around with her to help her breathe, and I wasn't quite sure if that was scary or just normal, for an old person.  I was eleven.  She put a little jewelry box on the table--the surface of that table was a big, colorful map, and I loved it--and out of the jewelry box she took a charm bracelet that was full to overflowing with little silver charms.  There are 28 links, and 29 charms.  She told me the story of each charm, stories that I wish I had written down, or that I could remember better.  There are three that I remember seeing for the first time, in amazement: a little pencil, which has lead--it doesn't write anymore, but you can see the nib of lead pushed down into the center.  A little harmonica, which doesn't play but which does have little teeny-tiny holes, so it looks as if it should play.  A little bicycle, with wheels that turn.

There are charms that signify her heritage and the places she cared about: there is a charm in the shape of the state of California and one of a San Francisco cable car, telling the story of her adult life in California, after she moved away from her little Danish-speaking village in Iowa to marry my grandfather.  There is an American flag, and a Danish flag, and a charm of the Little Mermaid statue that's in the Copenhagen harbor.

There are charms from trips: an Eiffel Tower, a pair of skis.

There is one charm that you can sort of tell doesn't "belong" with the aesthetics of the bracelet: it is larger than the others; it is the only one that is gold.  It's actually a neckace pendant, and it's a gold circle with a delicate edging and it is engraved "Sweet February 6th."  This one I do remember the story of: this was a necklace belonging to Annette, her daughter, my aunt, commemorating her sweet sixteen.  It lived with Annette from her sixteenth birthday on, and then came to live on the charm bracelet sometime after Annette died, which was when she was twenty-eight.

There are charms whose stories I think about re-inventing: a top hat, a cup, a canoe.  When did those come to the bracelet, and why?   For these stories, I would also have to invent for myself a version of my grandfather, a man I never met. If I invented him in writing, I would definitely use the story I've heard he used to tell: when he arrived in America on the boat from Denmark, he walked down the gangplank and saw a nugget of gold.  He kicked it off into the sea, because why bother picking it up?  He was going to California, and there was gold everywhere there.

I might also have to invent another man.

When Farmor died, she left me the charm bracelet, and some of her other jewelry.  I don't think I quite understood, at eleven, that she was telling me these stories because she wanted me to have the bracelet, because she wanted me to keep those memories--but, of course, that's what she was doing that day in the TV room: she was giving me some of her jewelry, and giving me a little view into her life.  Among the other pieces of jewelry she left me is a beautiful, delicate gold filigree bracelet made of arcs that suggest butterfly wings.  "This was given to me by the boyfriend I had before I met your grandfather," she whispered to me.

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor.  I think I would like to write a story about it.

*I wrote most of this post in December, when I was first starting this blog, in response to a "blog writing prompt": describe a piece of jewelry you have and where it came from.  Then, instead of writing this and then saying I'd like to write a story about it, I thought I should ACTUALLY try to write a story about it, so I never posted this, but I had it saved in my draft posts. I did start trying to actually write a story about it, or at least to use that bracelet as a jumping-off point, but I'm not getting very far yet.  Maybe you'll hear more about that later.  But anyway, it started here, as a story about a piece of jewelry that came to me via my grandmother.  And though I thought of it originally as a story about Farmor, the bracelet is an object that, like a person, has complex entanglements with other people--and so of course it is sort of about Annette too. So, this is just sort of a snippet of an idea-in-progress, but I decided to "publish" this bloggy version today, on February 6th, Annette's birthday.  I can remember going with my dad to the beach on her birthday when I was a little girl, watching him write "Happy Birthday" in the sand, and watching the waves slowly lick at the letters.  He said that when the waves finally washed over the words, it was like then she knew we were wishing her a happy birthday.  Maybe, reader, when you read this, it is like you are washing over my words, and then she knows I'm wishing her a happy birthday.