Love, Remembering and Being Remembered

Love  is an amazing thing, and I'm saddened we have commercialized it to the extent we have, but I hope this blog topic will bring a perspective to you, if you're reading. Maybe my "vibe" will attract YOU as part of the "tribe", and we can revitalize a tradition, similarly to how jewelry I provide has been revitalized, if appropriate and necessary.   

PEARLS.  "Pearls of wisdom."  Girls love pearls, was the expression, and I understand "man pearls" are all the rage now.  We are in new times where people are more free than ever before, possibly, to adorn themselves at home or out in public however they like.  They can trans-pire, and I've actually purchased a few items that are perhaps on the more "bold" side, with this emerging market in mind. I hope I'm showing something for everyone, here, and the story providing the foundation is of value.

Typically, I have become aware of Valentine's Day being "up next" in the holiday schedule the first time I go to the grocery store after Christmas.  Candy is displayed in heart-shaped boxes, and more pink things are in view than usual.  It's just more temptations for candy and things I have, since my teens, had to limit.  It's another holiday to "make special" in my own way.  

I have fond memories of Valentine's Day, as I hope most reading this might.  At school, the teacher would have the more expensive white paper lunch bags for us to decorate, including our name, and we'd hang them on the chalk board's rail. Some teachers entrusted us with the tape, others did it themselves.  

In the mean time, our parents would have facilitated each of us getting a box of Valentines, with enough for each student in our class to get a valentine from us.  That's how my mother did it, but in some larger families I suspect they were rationed, or the children were allowed to only give them to those they liked.

Sometimes parents would also purchase the little heart shaped candies with special messages written on them, as well.  I liked getting those in my Valentines, as my mother didn't provide those for me to give, or have.  At home, the kids would sit and fill out the envelopes for each student we were giving to, and then take them to school and match the names with the bags on the chalkboard rail.

In my case, my mother would be involved at home helping me if I needed it, while sitting at the dining room table near the kitchen and talking about how I needed to give a Valentine to every student, even if I did not so much like them.  

 Vintage, enamel .....

Eager anticipation would build as we watched our bag on the chalkboard railing as the teachers droned on about whatever it was we were being taught from the curriculum before the upcoming party, knowing our "room mothers" would come with treats to eat at the appointed time for the parties in the home room classrooms. 

My mother wasn't a room mother, she taught at my school starting the year I was in third grade, and before that, she was in school getting certified to teach elementary and didn't volunteer for anything ever.   

In the late 1960s, where we lived, most mothers didn't work outside the home for income, or at most it was  part time.  I don't know of any "career women" as mothers among my schoolmates. Several mothers in the area drove school buses or were our beloved "kitchen ladies", or worked in the school's office.  But my mother had attended a liberal arts college in Ohio, and I often think of her when watching the movie where Julia Roberts portrays the art teacher at a presigious girl's college, as her degree was in art education.  Women typically went into nursing, teaching, music, arts, physical education.  "Specials" as they were called in our day, art, music, PE.

We were ability grouped for the last three years of elementary, not just in home room but in math and science, as well, and the only girl I was in home room with every year had become my friend when we met in kindergarten.   

She had been very attached to her mother, and going to school half a day was traumatic at first, she recently related to me on a nice, long catch-up talk by phone.  We'd go through junior high, then slighly diverge in high school, as overcrowding lead to us going half a day, like when we were in kindergarten, but we weren't in the same session.  And our town didn't yet have a senior high school, we were to merge with the bigger town, nearby.  Something few of us were accepted with, but she managed, and rose to be voted "most loved". 

My mother had, for my fourth birthday, invited three girls my age to come to the house so we could know SOMEONE when we got to kindergarten. But this little girl was not yet in the "loop" in our community, and I'm so sorry for that.  I'd have loved to have had her at my birthday party, and then more comfortable entering kindergarten together.  It hurts my heart to hear how traumatic going to school was for her at first.

We, independent of each other, fell in love with schoolmates a dozen years after kindergarten, and picked the same day two years after high school to get married, having only seen each other once since junior high.  I'd move my date out a year because I wanted the flowers in the meadow to be at their peak.  We went to each others' weddings, but our mothers weren't with us.  I believe the last time her mother and I interacted was when I was 14 or 15, in 1974/75, the last year we were in junior high.  

In 2020, as C0v1d was just coming into typical people's awareness, my friend would send me a large envelope in mid-February.  I'd lived for 15 years at the far west end of Colorado, and she'd settled in a state north of Colorado where her husband's family was.  But we enjoyed the ease of messaging in Facebook, and were in better touch than we had been anytime other than when in the same classes as kids.

The envelope contained a Valentine's Day card with the first and last name "given" to me in childhood. A name I'd not had since I was 21 years old!  Her mother, outliving so many of our parents, had been doing activities in a skilled facility in the state she'd resided in since we were adults, where she had "come from", and 45 years after last seeing me had thought to make out a Valentine to me, and resourcefully sent it with the one to her daughter, my friend. 

It was incredible to know I was remembered, fondly enough to receive such a beautiful gift, and I'll never forget it!  What a remarkable mind, heart, and essentially "spirit" in a person who had an increasingly difficult life, somehow given an appropriate name by those naming her at birth. As if they'd fore-tell her future, they  utilized"dolor" -- in Spanish, a state of great sorrow, or distress. Pain.                                                                                                                                                                        

In my early adulthood, I always made time to send out Christmas cards.  I'd even make time to paint ornaments for each person I'd be giving gifts to.  I loved keeping in touch with my old gang of girls from growing up, and others I'd get to know well enough as an adult. Before social media and the handheld computers we call "phones" today, it was long distance to call people, and the yearly Christmas update in cards was a real treat! 

I'd recall the first copied update my very first friend's mother began sending when photocopying came to be available, in the early 1970s, I believe.  My mother resisted for a decade, hand writing a short letter she'd insert in the card, with a brief update on our family's highlights.                                                                                                               

But then 1986 came, and between my 60 hour a week job helping administer a big research project, getting married and a teenager come with the deal, buying a house that was very nice but outdated and needing lots of "love", I didn't get Christmas cards out.  The For Sale By Owner advertisement even had said "home to be loved" and the woman wanted a family, so we got to be the lucky new owners. 

I'd received a Christmas card from one of the "girls", who'd become best friends in high school with my friend since kindergarten plus my "BFF" from adolescent years. The three of them dated guys who were friends from the town we traveled to for high school, and when the girls went their separate ways for University study, the one I didn't yet know much lived in my dorm where I'd chosen to go, and would get rides back and forth with me on weekends we'd go "home".   

She'd gotten married after graduation, smarter than the rest of us on waiting to be more mature to make such a big decision, and moved to a far away state, but her card updated me on parents coming to visit for Christmas, then she'd travel "home" with them after New Years and she'd call me to set up getting together when she arrived. She'd been accepted for medical school and would join her husband in their plan to work with adolescents with mental health issues. 

None of us were with the guys we were with in high school, but the three amigas (girlfriends) had brilliantly kept in touch by every month rotating who would call whom, and have the charge on their telephone bill.  I'd become rather out of touch with everyone from my past, with the exception of my parents at "home". My mother called every Saturday on weekends I didn't travel "home" to see them, which was becoming less than every other weekend as a result of my immediate family, home, and life as a young adult was growing to have legs of it's own. 

The opportunities I had to see my old friends, or my family of origin, were increasingly important to me, but I was about to get a lesson in prioritizing people and time staying in touch.  

My phone rang after New Years, the base attached to a cord, but the phone was cordless, we were progressing in technology, but it was a long disance charge to call me from Denver.  I was expecting my doctor-of-the-future friend to be calling as she'd said in her card, but instead it was one of the other "three amigas".  Our friend was dead.  

Soon, we'd be together slipping and sliding in the snow walking to the graveside service, and I'd remember seeing my friend who had called me, whose parents were with us, turn her back to the grave and stare a while, collecting herself or otherwise processing. Those from our high school that weren't close to the family would head into town and go to a bar / restaurant and do as we would later for our ten year reunion -- catch up together.  When I'd seen the movie The Big Chill while in college, I'd wondered who would die first, how we'd come together and mourne.  And this was the last person I'd have thought would be the bring us together by passing.  

I'd learn the impressive system those three girls had for rotating who would call who so they shared the phone bills equitably and didn't lose touch with each other.  That's the kind of love they had.  I'd decide that I needed to fill the very big hole left by our too-soon departed friend, and for many years worked hard to get everyone together at least once a year.  I felt less need for that once social media (Facebook for us) came. 

The last time I planned it, ironically, they were waiting on me because my father had been hospitalized for the first time. I'd asked one of the gals who'd been at my fourth birthday party if she could host us, and the one whose mother later sent me the card was having to hold off her family's pressures to leave, as they had a long drive that night to get home.  It was, I'm sure, the last time those that I spent my formative years with, from age two through high school and into college, will be together.  But for about 30 glorious minutes, we laughed and told stories and interacted as if we were --- kids again.  

After the first of us died and we'd convened together to honor her, that year I'd not sent Christmas cards and learned how the three amigas had a plan for staying in touch by telephone, I'd notice at the grocery, those cute little Valentines like we gave each other in school.  I'd buy as many as I would have needed to send for Christmas, and filled them out like you would to put them in the little bag on the chalk rail.  Then I put that inside the envelopes for the Christmas cards that I hadn't gotten to.  Addressed them.  Stamped them.  Mailed them. 

Everyone LOVED THEM, because it was novel and they had been inundated at Christmas with cards, but a Valentine was special.  1987, it was.  36 years ago.  I can only imagine what made me percolate up in the mind of a beautiful woman, 45 years after I'd last seen her, in order to receive a most special Valentine, as I did. 

This is ultimately a part of the story with my jewelry, today.  I'm including a note-sized blank card with a heart on a piece of paper rolling off a typewriter, and blank envelope, with each jewelry piece or set I package up.  My hope is that people will make a note about the jewelry, to keep with it for the future, or to use it and send to someone.

So far, it's about half and half, purchasers buying for gifts or self.  And, like the image I place in each listing in the Forums, the retro way I want people to contact me -- calling (by phone or through Messenger, as some are working with me via Facebook at this time).   I'll share what a buyer I'm working with currently wrote:  "It has been nice working with you and getting to know you.  Your help was also very much appreciated."  They let me know today they've sent me, in the old fashioned mail, the payment for a lovely pair of earrings (not featured on this blog).

To adorn this blog post, I've added photos of pieces you'll find in the forums. I've selected there from what's listed in Forums with Valentine's Day in mind, but of course ANYTHING can be appropriate, if you see something that strikes you, or you're "drawn to", as the earrings I'm packaging today to mail were described by the buyer.  I'm going to different ways of photographing the pieces.  I'm living and learning, and I appreciate your coming along for the journey.  

Click on the word Forums in the purple stripe up top at Lumigrate.com, and you'll see a very long list of forums, the jewelry is right up top.  There are separate areas for sets, necklaces, earrings, rings, etc.   

I hope YOU find something you LOVE, for your SELF, or OTHERS.  Make the season memorable, somehow or another, this jewelry and note cards stuff just being how I can help you.  

GRATE~Fully, Mardy                               

In honor of our mothers, who taught us at the kitchen table, preparing our Valentines, or were "room mothers" and brought treats to our parties for Valentine's Day and other special occasions, 50 and more years ago.  And to my special friend and her mother, who, together, made my day, that last Valentine's before the upside down spin we had start in 2020 due to a bug that launched in '19.  I'm so sorry the way that impacted the last three years of your beautiful mother's life, and your not being able to visit.  I have outlived my mother now, and I hope you will outlive yours.  May they, both Catholics, be getting to know each other in the afterlife, because they did not do so while in ours.