My Mother and Jewels

My mother will be 80 next week exactly …She very rarely wore jewels …She still wears her very simple wedding ring , and once or twice she bought herself a jewel, but never or very seldom wore it. It is because it was considered vain, or bad to wear jewels. She came from an Italian family. She lost her mum when she was 8. I have always heard her say that she would have liked to have her mother’s gold chain , or the 2 or 3 ” jewels ” that she had … But as a keepsake, unfortunately it is something that her stepmother got rid of.

When my younger sister and I grew up, she started getting rid of the few things she had … In fact , as a young girl she was so forbidden to wear jewels or to make up for example , that she simply can’t change. So she gave me her nacre necklace , well she lent it to me once , and then said, “Keep it ” … She did the same with a gold Chinese medallion that my father had bought her … She lent it forever to my sister … And so for that gold bracelet that I don’t wear because I am afraid to lose it … And the precious stone that she had bought in Madagascar ,and the colour of which she liked – she had it made into a pendant, and it was a birthday present to me …
It is very symbolic to me: ” What I can’t have, what is too good for me, that is for you my daughters … ”

What she has worn for 20 years now around her neck is my father’s wedding ring that I had taken away from his swollen finger on his sick bed ….That too means a lot …

And of course , I like jewels … I like cheap things ….That you can wear to show that you are vain , and that you aren’t afraid to lose …. And there are a few that mean more to me …So , jewels or their absence , that speaks a lot.

PS .What a luminous woman on the photo, this woman, your mother !