I’ve already written the saga of my mother’s emerald ring (https://arwenbicknell.com/2025/03/14/write-down-your-story-day/), but I could never wear her rings. She has lovely, long, thin fingers, and her rings did not fit on my sausages even when I was in high school.

That did not stop me from coveting everything else, though. She had amazing turquoise earrings. She had tons and tons of malachite—necklaces, bracelets, whole sets. She had cheap stuff I bought her for birthdays and Christmas because I thought it was pretty; she had expensive stuff my dad bought her for the same occasions.

And she NEVER WORE ANY OF IT.

OK, “never” is an exaggeration, but my mom was (and is) very much a T-shirt and jeans type. She’d wear ornaments to parties and fancy restaurants, but that was about it. Earrings were just a good way to get your ear ripped off. Bracelets tended to get in the way. She’s like me and sweats a lot, and necklaces “just get gross too fast on the back of my neck.”

On the one hand, this made me mad. All that lovely stuff, and the thing she wore most (again, mostly out to dinner) was a necklace with a dog pendant my dad found somewhere.

On the other hand, I saw her point (or maybe I just developed the same lazy habits) as I got older. My fingers started to puff up and deflate, changing size from day to day, so rings were not the constant they had been in college. Earrings left when I had a baby, and their return was an intermittent afterthought. Necklaces never landed right with any neckline I wore. It was too much effort.

So it was a pointless victory when last summer my mom and I were putting clean sheets on her bed and she started poking through her jewelry boxes and gave me everything I’d ever wanted.

Those turquoise earrings? They are HEAVY. The bracelets catch on sweaters. All the junk I bought her will turn you green, and not with envy.

But oh, I do still love her malachite!