Charmed, I'm sure.

Today I'm wearing a jingling bracelet which brought back precious memories.

When I was a girl, a lot of women wore charm bracelets and collected charms one at a time. The bracelet in the photo above is a photo I took off of the Internet- but it could have been mine. I was in band- played the flute and sang in choir.

 

My mother had a charm bracelet that was heavy and jingled. She kept it in her jewelry box all year long and the only time she wore it was at Christmas time. My then-husband always said: "that bracelet your mother wears drives me crazy!" This always caused me to giggle on the inside.

 

In my mind, my mother was always beautiful. She had auburn hair that she wore in a french roll. She was elegant and wore little hats with veils to church. She was my Girl Scout leader for many years and would wear white gloves when we had ceremonies.

 

As the years passed, mother became more and more crazy eccentric with her dress. She still wears several rings and wears a ring on her thumb. She wore rings on her toes and on a flight to Hawaii one time, one of the rings got stuck when her feet swelled during the flight.

 

I always joked that mother dresses like a gypsy. In fact, a few years back I went to a Halloween party dressed as a gypsy and wore one of mother's gauzy full skirts and a brilliant shawl with roses on it.

 

Sometimes I think I'm becoming my mother. I've always referred to myself as "Nancy, Jr." because I think I look so much like her. Now, I too, am becoming more confident and happy and expressive in my jewelry and clothing.

 

Mother was greatly influenced by her grandma who was a positive, smiling person. My mother is not in very good health and is crippled to the point of nearly being home-bound. But, if you were to meet her, she would smile and when you said "how do you do?" Her answer would be "fine."

No complaints.

 

I now work in a new office where I am very happy. Our dress code is not as strict as it was where I worked before. I can wear my crazy artistic, expressive jewelry. Fridays are the most casual and today I wore a jingling necklace with matching bracelet. As I typed and moved and my bracelet jingled, it brought back the memory of mother's charm bracelet. I always loved looking at her charms and she would tell me the story of each one. There was a silhouette of a girl's head with my name and birth date engraved on it. For me it was a sweet time shared with my mother. Sometimes I would just go round and round, spinning it around her wrist as I studied each charm.

 

The jingling of a bracelet brings memories of a magical time in my life - Christmas, when mother always wore her charm bracelet. It is a happy sound.