When my mother died I got her jewelry box. Though some glass is missing and other glass is hazy, plus the mirrors inside are clouded and the box wasn't the best kept, it is still beautiful. It is a beautiful tall jewelry box, though actually it is more like a little cabinet or case.
I was going through my mother's jewelry box again a few minutes ago. I just felt like it, there was no real reason. I went through the main section and was fine except for a little nostalgia concerning a pair of gold earrings my grandma bought me so long ago that I can't even remember how old I was.
Then i got to the little cubby with the rings and bracelets. I pulled out all the bracelets to look at them, then I started putting them away one by one into groups on the hooks. From my aunt. Belonging to my mother. Then the most important category.
Bracelets I made for her. I started really thinking when I came to these. For the longest time I felt like mother hated me, but when I see those bracelets I realize over and over again that maybe she hated me less than it seemed. I mean, she must have loved me at least a bit to keep bracelets I made for her so long ago.
I remember making two of the bracelets. Both had curved piping beads and swarovski crystal beads. I made them one year when I was visiting my grandparents in Florida. This was the only year I went with just my mom. Other years I went by myself or with my brother J or all of us would drive all the way down there.
Another bracelet with pink beads and golden glitter beads I kindof remember. When I made it there was a little golden fan charm hanging in the center, though the charm is no more than a long lost memory now. I can only remember standing in her room by the nightstand, surveying more work under the lamplight. It had to be beautiful for her.
I'm pretty sure she had died more than a year after I gave her those bracelets. Which means she had kept them for a really long time, throughout the time she screamed at us and told us just how much she hated us causing me to reach for escape in a bottle of pills. She had never gotten rid of them, despite how much she claimed to regret our existence.
That means she must have loved me at least a little all that time. Right?
