#charm bracelet

When I was young, charm bracelets were fashionable. Daddy started my charm bracelet fixation when I was very little with the souvenir bracelet he brought me from his trip to Washington, DC.

Adult women wore them too, of course, but the trend was especially popular among teenage girls. If you were lucky enough to have someone who started you off with the gift of one of these bracelets of interconnected silver links, you could look forward to receiving gifts of small silver charms on every important event that occurred in your life, or you could add them yourself. The commemorative charms on our bracelets served as a sort of wearable scrapbook of the important moments in our lives.

When I was 12, Mother and Daddy gave me this silver linked bracelet as a birthday present. It already held my first two charms: a tiny violin from my parents (this was an instrument which I played) and a small Bible from my Grandmother. Over the years my bracelet became crowded with charms attached to almost every link. I had charms commemorating trips throughout the state of Ohio (where we lived) and the state of Wisconsin (where I had gone on a Girl Scout camping trip.) I had a charm from a family trip to Niagara Falls. Tucked in among the others was a tiny silver shell that I purchased for myself on my Girl Scout troops’ trip to Nassau. It hung alongside a bunny and a Christmas tree, both gifts to celebrate memorable holidays. My silver charms eventually numbered over two dozen.

Eventually Mother and Daddy decided that I was actually serious about this hobby and gave me a bracelet made up of gold links. Gold charms were more expensive, of course, so I did not acquire such a large collection for this bracelet. It holds my high school diploma charm, the fraternity pledge pin of my first boyfriend, and a small mustard seed from a necklace that my older brother gave me one year for Christmas. There is a small gold rectangle with the name “Tris Speaker” etched on one side and a date on the other side that I think must represent Speaker’ induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame- Tris Speaker being one of the most prominent baseball players in the early years of the last century. Among other teams, he played for and managed the Cleveland Indians. His wife, Mary Frances, was a relation of a cousin of Daddy’s Mother. Apparently the charm had been given to Grandma and eventually she passed it on to me.

This was my jewelry box when I was a little girl. It is lined with aqua silk and when I opened it, which I did A LOT, it played music. My daughter has googled it (yes you can google a song) and she has identified it as an excerpt from a Strauss waltz.

When I was about 6 years old, Daddy was part of a legal team that went to Washington DC in the interest of their client. I was way too young to be concerned with why he was going, but I remember being concerned for him, while he was traveling so far away from us and home. I assumed that Daddy, who after all had been in Australia and the South Pacific during the Second World War, was as concerned about making this long trip safely as I was. As he was packing I got a sudden idea. I raced across the hall to my room and brought him my small Calvary Cross. This is the name for a bare cross that has three steps at its base. It had been given to me the previous Christmas by my grandparents. I kept it on my dresser and after the bedroom light was turned off, I took comfort from its faint purplish glow. “Keep this in your room and then at night you will have the light,” I told him thinking that I was reassuring him.

Daddy solemnly thanked me and tucked the cross into his suitcase.

The story that he later told was that he was sharing his hotel room with another lawyer. This man was Catholic and was astonished to see a cross that was not only not a crucifix but that glowed in the dark. He was probably also surprised to see that my father, who had been hired by the law firm as a tough minded litigator, was prepared to faithfully follow the directions given to him by a little girl!

Daddy brought us all souvenirs of his trip and mine was this little charm bracelet which features small representations of the capitol building, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. This was not the only “jewelry” that my music box eventually contained, but it became the central piece of my collection.